The Visionary Eye of Allan Stone
Founded in 1960 by art dealer Allan Stone (1932–2006), the New York gallery known today as Allan Stone Projects has been admired for over half a century. Celebrated for its eclectic approach and early advocacy of pivotal artists of the 20th century, Allan Stone Gallery was a leading authority on Abstract Expressionism, the New York dealer for Wayne Thiebaud for over forty years, and showed the works of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Joseph Cornell, John Graham and John Chamberlain. Stone also promoted the work of a younger generation of artists that were in conversation with other artists in his collection, working in the mediums of assemblage, collage and new modes of abstraction. In addition to modern masterworks and contemporary art, Allan Stone also collected and exhibited international folk art, Americana and important decorative arts and industrial design.
Derived from the figure and mythic narratives, Hadzi’s sculpture references antiquity and classical artifacts – abstracted anatomical forms, columnar and other architectural elements, helmets, weaponry and body armor function as visual metaphors for ancient cultures. “I was interested in mythology, and I was interested in movement,” Hadzi remarked on his years in Rome, “I was attempting through formal methods to exaggerate sexual tension or apprehension. Suddenly I was myself in an atmosphere of freedom.” Powerfully rendered in bronze his sculptures convey raw emotion, brute strength and mass, tempered with a delicate rush of whimsy, vivacity and sensuality.
Born in New York City on March 21, 1921, Hadzi graduated from Cooper Union in 1950 and received a Fulbright Fellowship in the same year. After studying sculpture in Greece, he moved to Rome under the GI Bill where he lived for twenty-five years. Hadzi returned to the U.S. where he taught at Harvard University for fourteen years. He continued to create sculpture until his death in 2006. Hadzi is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; The Phillips Collection and the Guggenheim Museum. Receiving over twenty sculpture commissions, Hadzi’s work appears in public squares, concert halls, federal and private plazas, and universities throughout the world.
Auction Results Dimitri Hadzi
