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N.Y. EVE Post.

ART COMMENT
Sculpture Hits Park Avenue And Slum Show Reaches Fifth

Announcement of World's Fair Exhibition Rounds Out Big Week for City's Artists

By JEROME KLEIN
This has been a week of big gains by New York's progressive artists. They won 40,000 square feet in Flushing Meadows for a World's Fair contemporary American art show. In the Park Avenue sector the forty-six members of the Sculptors' Guild held the Thirty-ninth Street corner in command of all approaches. And on Fifth Avenue an American group took over the top floor of the Maison Francaise in Rockerfeller Center, with its stirring show appealing for "Roofs for Forty Million." 
The sculptors had struggled in snow and mud to prepare their positions. Besides the terrain there were also artistic temperaments to be smoothed out. But when the last shrubs and pebbles were put in place under a benign April sun, it was seen that they had conquered all, and held a strategix situation. 
Occupants of adjoining offices and apartments enjoyed a long-distance preview, while crowds of pedestrians, impatient for the opening, did their best to snatch a glimmer at every seam of the tightly drawn canvas screen.
Within, the grounds had been handsomely landscaped into a sculpture park accommodating not quite one hundred pieces. Each walk, lined by smaller compositions, led up to a monumental work. First place among the bid works must be accorded a plaster version of William Zorach's majestic "Spirit of the Dance," originally done for Radio City.
Minna Harkavy's striding man, Mark Friedman's "Fecundity," Louis Slobodkin's "Shulamuth" and Milton Hebald's standing nude are other large-scale figures that I found impressive. Said Baizerman's "March of the Innocents" in copper relief seemed plastically vague, while there was also an indecisive note in Sonia Gordon Brown's "Toward a New World," which did not measure up to her smaller classical torso. 
There was an abundance of fine examples in direct stone cutting: Jose de Creeft's beautifully rounded figure called "Universe," Albino Cavalito's fine polished polar bear in the homely act of nipping a flea, handsomely carved seated figures by Jean de Marco and John Hovannes, John Flannagan's "Morning," Aaron Goodelman's "Mother and Child" closely embraced in glistening marble, and Oronzio Maldarelli's similar theme in which he strains a bit for original form. 
Nathaniel Kaz's splendid head of a boy, Margarent Kane's "Undersea Ballet" relief and Simone Boas' "Woman" were other distinguished examples of direct stone carving. 
Self-balancing torsos by Chaim Gross stood out among the few things of abstract tendency, which also numbered Warren Wheelock's "Coq d'Or" and Cesare Stea's tubular robot. 
Noteworthy in small genre were Helene Sardeau's charming little dancing figures and Alice Decker's "Sea Breeze."
IN the animal field were Adolph Wolff's patently irate gorilla, Dina Melicov's horse with a bright green finish, Paul Manship's hound dog, Cornelia Van A. Chapin's bear cub, Pail Fiene's "Rising Deer" and Concetta Scaravaglione's "Girl and Gazelle" engaged in taming each other. 
Additional exhibitors are Aaron Ben-Shmuel, Harold Cash, Robert Cronbach, Louise Cross, John Cunningham, Jose Ruiz de Rivers, Hunt Diederich, Alfeo Faggi, Herbert Ferbert, Hy Freilicher, Eugenie Gershoy, Enrico Glicenstein, Maurice Glickman, Vincent Glinsky, Genevieve Karr Hamlin, Alonzo Hauser, Milton Horn, Berta Margoulies, George Meyers, David Michnick, Montague Ward, Hugo Robus, Mary Tarleton, T. Trajan, Polygnotos Vagis, Nat Werner, Anita Weschler.

Magazine of Art. Washington D.C.

SCULPTORS OUT OF DOORS
Very Different from the staid Vale of Academe is the exhibition originated, arranged and directed by the Sculptors Guild. In a vacant lot at Thirty-ninth Street and Park Avenue, where a model housing exhibition used to be located, nearly fifty of the torchbearers of contemporary sculpture got to work, doing the landscaping themselves in the rain and mud of the worst week of April. Men and woman toiled together. A fence was erected and covered with canvas. Paths were laid out and shrubbery planted. The list of patrons grew, including museum directors, Federal and municipal officials, connoisseurs and collectors, members of the social register and patrons of the arts generally—an imposing list. 
The hardworking artists were rewarded by a bright sunshiny opening day and a capacity audience. At last accounts the show seemed destined to run well into May. The ten point program announced by the Guild included cultural, educative and stimulative objectives, the enlistment of architectural and museum and public interest, to uphold new art values and to combat reactionary tendencies and any attempt at curtailment of artistic freedom, etc. The exhibition made an excellent impression and illustrated the program. One of the enthusiastic sponsors was that dean of academic painters, Harry Watrous, lending his mellow experience to a new struggle. 
Certainly the show presented some memorable work. Perhaps it is a definite turning point in the struggle of contemporary sculptors to obtain an adequate hearing for an art fallen of late on evil days. Some of the pieces had been seen before but bore up well on reacquaintance—notable such works as the Zorach Spirit of the Dance and the massively expressive Head in Black Granite by de Creeft. Here are also Sonia Gordon Brown's two heroic figures, Toward a New Day, expressing the spirit of the occasion. Helene Sardeau's gracious and simplified Kneeling Figure; Milton Horn's Portrait of the Artist's Mother, a serene interpretation of age; Chaim Gross's involved rhythms; Cornelia Chapin's Bear Cub in volcanic rock; Sail Baizerman's March of the Innocents, a relief in hammered copper; Louis Slobodkin's erect and arresting Shulamith; and pieces by Milton Hebald and Nat Warner (scarcely emerged from their panic over their recent first and very creditable shows at the A.C.A. Gallery)—all these and nearly a hundred other pieces in wide variety and seemingly in every medium, were effectively exhibited in the made-to-order surroundings. Here were Paul Manship's giant and smoothly executed Hound Dog, Cesare Stea's somewhat cubistic Man With Book in aluminum patina, Minna Harkavy's striking bronze portrait head of Hall Johnson. And so mid-town New York sat up and took notice.
MAY 1. 1938