1961-1962
Read more here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4014310/
Known throughout history as the People of the Book, Jews attach great mystical significance to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
Towering above a fountain in the Court of Faith in the Garden of Memories is an Albert Wein sculpture that gives kinetic perspective to a tower of Hebrew letters. Completed in 1968, the five welded bronze letters spell the Hebrew word emunah, or faith in English.
Others of Wein’s bronze sculptures can be seen above the Goetz sarcophagus and the Cummins sarcophagus in the Garden of Memories. Also of note are the bronze door handles on the Administration Building in the form of the Hebrew letter shin, which represents the name of God.
Find out more here: http://hillsidememorial.org/about-hillside/art-architecture/garden-of-memories/
Dated April 21, 1969
Just found this image in an article from the Rocky Mountain News about art work at the University of Wyoming. While Albert was a professor there in 1967, he created a set of four panels to be displayed on the exterior of the Science Building. This is one of them. The article says, “Relief, right, on the exterior of a newly build University of Wyoming building is one of the best permanent pieces of art work on the Laramie campus. It was rendered by an art professor who was in residence at UW two years ago. “
Sensuality, dignity, sincerity and validity are all hallmarks of the work of Albert Wein. He is primarily known as a sculptor, but at the same time, he has demonstrated tremendous capability as a painter.
-Frederick W. Sleight, Director Palms Springs Dessert Museum
It becomes apparent when viewing a retrospective collection of Wein’s work that he has always been under the strong influence of organic shapes and forms. He first began with the human figure and in more recent times has been involved with the essence of simplicity and the dignity of natural forms as points of departure for his work. Four to five years ago he became conscious of the design quality of animal bones, an influence similar to that experienced by Henry Moore.
-Frederick W. Sleight, Director Palms Springs Dessert Museum
Moore, Brancusi and Arp have all been admired by Wein, for each artist found beauty in the world around him in natural shapes, masses and designs. The significant result of Wein’s work, therefore, could be likened unto the capturing of th essential elements of natural organic shapes as forms of esthetic expression.
-Frederick W. Sleight, Director Palms Springs Dessert Museum
The artist’s wife, Deyna Wein, when asked for her impressions and characterizations of her husband’s work, felt that his message was involved with the joy of living and the nobility of man. Further, she says, his work has an uplifting, spiritual quality. Although he is fully aware of the tragedy, the brutality and the ugliness of our world, he does not document this with social statements but rather expresses the idea that man can and must rise above these in order to reach his full potential.
excerpt from The Desert Sun, Palm Springs, CA November 6, 1968
by Helen Wilson
Michelangelo, the great sculptor, standing before a gleaming block of white marble was known to say, “Within you lies ugliness and beauty; what comes out depends on me.”
And so it has been down through the ages with cultural arts The molded or chiseled beauty created by a sculptor’s hands; nature’s wonders which come alive under the artist’s brush; or the words of beauty and wisdom that flow from an author’s pen.
Wasn’t it Matthew Arnold who said that culture is a searching for sweetness and light and the passion for making both prevail?
Albert Wein is this type of artist. In a modern world, where specialization is the keyword, Wein transcends such skepticisms as “single skills” in man. He combines a successful creativeness in boht painting and sculpturing. Few painters have become masters at sculpture and still fewer sculptors have become painters of note.
By Chris Bergeron/Daily News staff www.metrowestdailynews.com GHS Posted Oct 12, 2008 @ 02:00 PM BOSTON —
Albert Wein created some of the most heroic and sensual sculptures you’ve probably never seen.
But if you saw his frankly erotic nude “Phryne Before the Judges” or the monumental granite goliath “Unity” spanning the Columbia River, you’d never forget his name.
In the first retrospective of his work, “Albert Wein: American Modernist,” more than 50 of his classic sculptures, paintings and medals are now displayed at the Boston Athenaeum.
Review from www.WeeklyDig.com Sept 2008
By COLIN ASHER
Four horsemen, wretched and desiccated, cloaked and flying blindly, gallop out of the eye of a bronze cylinder in the shape of a mushroom cloud. They represent the biblical horsemen of the Apocalypse—Conquest, War, Famine and Death—that sculptor Albert Wein thought nuclear weapons would unleash on the earth.
Wein, though not a household name, was a highly decorated sculptor. His career began in the ’30s and ended with his death in 1991. “He was one of that generation that has just now been rediscovered,” David Dearinger, curator and art historian, says. “The group that kept ‘the figure’ alive in art.”
The first major retrospective of Wein’s work is showing in Boston. Curated by Dearinger, the show is timed to coincide with the publication of the first major monograph of Wein’s life and work.
