Theodore Roszak
Theodore Roszak
1907 - 1981
American sculptor, painter and printmaker of Polish birth. He was brought up in Chicago from the age of two. He attended classes at the Art Institute while he was in high school, studying there full-time from 1925 to 1926. He was attracted by American realist painters and went to New York in 1926 to study at the National Academy of Design with Charles Hawthorne; disappointed, he took private lessons from George Luks and attended Columbia University classes in logic and philosophy. In 1927 he resumed study at the Art Institute of Chicago and began to teach there. His first one-man exhibition, consisting of lithographs, was held in 1928 at the Allerton Gallery, Chicago.
A European travel fellowship provided crucial exposure to Modernism (1929–30). For six months he was based in Prague, but he also visited Germany, Austria, Italy and France. During 1931 he learned to use industrial tools. His earliest sculpture was in clay and plaster, but from 1932 to 1945 he made constructions in painted wood, metals and plastic, reflecting utopian Constructivist and Bauhaus ideals; he also experimented with photograms (see PHOTOGRAPHY, §I). Airport Structure was his first work of prefabricated metal parts (aluminium, copper, steel, 0.35 m, 1932; Newark, NJ, Mus.). Between 1938 and 1940 he taught at the Bauhaus-inspired Design Laboratory, New York. His first exhibitions of constructions were in 1940 at the Julien Levy Gallery and at the Artists Gallery, both in New York. During World War II he taught aircraft mechanics and built aeroplanes.
By 1946 Roszak had become disillusioned with violent use of technology in war; there was a dramatic shift of his style to expressionist welded, brazed metal sculptures, often of violent subjects, such as Spectre of Kitty Hawk (welded and brazed steel, 1 m, 1946–7; New York, MOMA). His later work included large drawings, many on cosmological themes. Among Roszak’s numerous large-scale sculptures were the spire and bell tower for Eero Saarinen’s chapel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1955–6) and the 11.3 metre-wide eagle for the US Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London (1960). [Joan H. Pachner. "Roszak, Theodore." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 11, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T074075.]
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