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THE ART NEWS

8

trappings. Though the artist has fined it down to a flattened stylization which approaches the mannered elegance of Lovet-Lorski, this torso successfully avoids the latter's specious triviality. In his Wrestlers Ben-Shmuel achieves a magnificent control of mass and surface texture—no mean feat in the flinty Quinsey granite he elects to work in—but the somewhat too elaborately ingenious interlacing of limbs leaves the spectator confused. America's foremost animalier, Cornelia Chapin, requires no introduction. The superb design and workmanship of her giant Frog, reflecting the virtuosity of her teacher, Hernandez, is the result of a real knowledge of form and a patiently acquired technique with which few can compete. 

Outstanding among the portraits is de Creeft's Semitic Head, heavy, Oriental, fateful. De Creeft treats certain elements much in

[[image]]
EXHIBITED BY THE SCULPTURS' GUILD, BROOKLYN MUSEUM
"TORSO OF A YOUNG MAN" BY BEN-SHMUEL, IN GRANITE

the manner of Lachaise, but here the fine, velvety surface of the lead achieves a warmth lacking in the latter's polished bronzes. Two excellent stone portraits are by Maldarellia and Hovannes respectively. 

Good abstract work has been done by Robus and José Ruiz de Rivera, the soft, suggestive shapes of whose marble Composition are piled up with an easy grace. Disappointing in spite of its brilliant exposition of a difficult technique is Baizerman's reclining Titan woman in hammered copper, whose purposeless, fragmentary state suggests a wall decoration waiting to be set up. Glickman's unfinished War Victims promises all the quality that was found in the Destitute he exhibited at the Federal Art Gallery last year. 

The surprising inclusion of Manship's Pegasus, a super-decoration nearer the work of a medallist than a sculptor, and of Sterne's time-honored The Awakening strike the incongruously academic note in the show. For the rest it offers not only individual pieces of real quality, but promise for the future of American Sculpture.