Description

Who doesn't love a good toy? This one is by beloved Pittsburgh sculptor and craftsman Henry Bursztynowicz, probably completed sometime during the 1970s.  We wish we had more.

Details

• Untitled
• Brass
  
• Artist label on base
• 11" high, 9 1/2" wide, 4 1/4 " deep
  

About the Artist

"[Henry] Bursztynowicz was a graduate of Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). His advanced study was at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and Instituto d’Arte in Florence, Italy. He was on the faculty at the University of Missouri and taught at Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Center, the original name of Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. “Revisiting the Work of Henry B.” serves as a retrospective that spans his entire career. In addition to a few works that were in his exhibit at the center in 1960, many of the works — including his signature Travertine marble sculptures and cast-aluminum pieces — were created subsequently.
Bursztynowicz’s earliest works offer a key to his art, the art of an inspired tinkerer, of a magician who took basic, everyday materials and transformed them into true sculpture. For example, for the piece “Corporate Struggle,” Bursztynowicz brazed nails into a towering — relatively speaking — figurative sculpture. And not just a representative sculpture but a humorous one, in which the “man at the top” has his burdensome clingers-on."

Source: The Pittsburgh Tribune (2009)