Biography

Born in 1897 in College Point, New York, Reuben Nakian began his studies at the Robert Henri School before completed his education at the Art Students League of New York in 1912.  At age twenty-nine he was an apprentice to noted Art Deco sculptor Paul Manship for three years and worked as a studio assistant for early modernist sculptor Gaston Lachaise, both in New York.  He received honorary doctorates from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (1969) and the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut (1972).  Nakian is the recipient of numerous awards including, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1931); a Ford Foundation Fellowship (1958); medals from the Philadelphia College of Art (1967) and the American Academy/National Institute of Arts and Letters (1973); and the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (1983).  He has also received awards from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts (1979), Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (1977), and the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (1979).  Nakian represented the United States as the major sculptor in the Sao Paulo Bienal (1961) and the Venice Biennale (1968).  Nakian died in 1986 in Stamford, Connecticut at the age of eighty-nine. (SJMA Collections Committee, 2011)

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