Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Swiss 1901-1966

Bronze, 56 3/4 x 20 x 9 in. (144.1 x 50.8 x 22.9 cm.)
Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Dallas, Texas
1984.A.37

If you love sculpture and are disappointed by the typical museum collection of this sensual art form, then the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas will be a real treat. Located in the downtown Arts District, The Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection started more than fifty years ago.  In 1950, Raymond and Patsy traveled to Mexico, where they became interested in pre-Columbian art and bought the first works in what would become a sizable collection of objects from ancient Latin America.  They soon purchased other ethnographic and archaeological works and also acquired a number of important American modernist works.  Mr. Nasher often credits this early involvement with pre-Columbian and other tribal arts as having whetted the Nasher’s appetite for, and appreciation of, Modern three-dimensional works.

By the mid-1960s, the Nashers had made their first significant purchases of modern sculpture.  These included Jean Arp’s Torso with Buds (1961), two major bronzes by Henry Moore, Three Piece No. 3:  Vertebrae (1968) and Two Piece Reclining Figure No. 9 (1968, no longer in the Collection), and Barbara Hepworth’s large and powerful Squares with Two Circles (Monolith) (1963, cast 1964).  In rapid succession, they went on to acquire works by, among others, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, and Isamu Noguchi.

Surveyed as a whole, the Nasher Collection demonstrates considerable balance between early modern works and art of the postwar period, abstraction and figuration, monumental outdoor and more intimately scaled indoor works, and the many different materials used in the production of modern art.  Perhaps its single most distinguishing feature, however, is the depth with which it represents certain key artists, including Matisse (with eleven sculptures), Picasso (seven), Smith (eight), Raymond Duchamp-Villon (seven), Moore (eight), Miró (four), and Giacometti (thirteen).  Such well-rounded perspectives on the development of these masters provide, in effect, a series of mini-retrospectives within the Collection’s overall historical spectrum.

Museum background courtesy Nasher Sculpture Center website.