Biography

Seymour Lipton was a self-taught Abstract Expressionist sculptor known for his textured metallic forms. Beginning with models of identifiable figures, Lipton twisted, shaped, and scraped his forms into abstract symbols of torture and uncertainty in response to the human suffering and upheaval that marked the period of the Great Depression through WWII.  Deeply influenced by Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, his three-dimensional forms became an innovative symbolic language based on stream-of-consciousness drawings. In 1979, John Russell, chief art critic of The New York Times, wrote of Lipton’s ability to tap into the human psyche: “Lipton deals with nestlings and pairings and oppositions of form that now speak to everyone. Their meaning is always legible, their ambiguities are nicely balanced, and their energies are well under control.” Though he initially worked in wood, by the 1940s he devoted himself strictly to working with brass, lead, and bronze, developing a new technique of brazing on Monel metal.

Lipton’s Medallion (c. 1960) was commissioned by Art in America during the period when Jean Lipman was editor-in-chief (1941 – 1970) of the magazine. The small, polished bronze disc with raised relief is emblazoned with an abstract symbol that despite its shallow dimensionality resembles the deep corkscrew and sweeping winged forms that appeared is the artist’s large scale works at the time.

This work is the first by Seymour Lipton to enter SJMA’s permanent collection.

Biography
Lipton was born in the Bronx in 1903 and died in 1986. A self-taught artist, he received a DDS from Columbia University (1927). He taught at Cooper Union and the New School for Social Research, New York (1940 – 1965) and was a guest critic at the Yale University Art School (1957 – 1959). His work has been the subject of many solo exhibitions at the Jewish Museum, New York; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Milwaukee Art Center, Wisconsin; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; and the Venice Biennale in 1958. Lipton’s work in the permanent collections of Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, New York; Baltimore Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of the Arts; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of the Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He is the recipient of the Guggenheim Award and several major public commissions.  (acquisitions meeting February 20, 2018)

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