Ernest Trova

Ernest Tino Trova (February 19, 1927 – March 8, 2009) was a self-trained American surrealist and pop art painter and sculptor. Best known for his signature image and figure series, The Falling Man, Trova considered his entire output a single "work in progress." Trova used classic American comic character toys in some of his pieces because he admired their surrealism. Many of Trova's sculptures are cast in unusual white bronze. He began as a painter, progressing through three-dimensional constructions to his mature medium, sculpture. Trova's gift of forty of his works led to the opening of St. Louis County, Missouri's Laumeier Sculpture Park.

His interest in poetry led him to begin a correspondence with Ezra Pound, who had been confined to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., after World War II.

Artist He worked at the Famous-Barr department store as a decorator and window dresser. A self-taught artist, Morton D. May, an art collector who later served as chairman of The May Department Stores Company (which owned the store he worked at), bought one of his paintings and contributed it to the Museum of Modern Art. In an interview that year with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he described the piece as "a personal hypothetical theory on the nature of man". Trova further stated that "I believe that man is first of all an imperfect creature. The first reaction I usually get to this is that I'm pessimistic. I don't think I am.... It's very close to many theories of man — the Catholic view that man is a fallen creature, for example."

Trova created multiple versions of The Falling Man, including variant sculptures and wristwatches with images of the piece. This led to charges of commercialism and critiques that the piece was period kitsch. An associate of Trova's rejected the criticism, noting that the duplicate works was an example of seriality, in which "Trova invented this great symbol of human fallibility through processing and reprocessing the image. Trova's work is misunderstood. Seriality is as essential to his work as it was to Warhol's. One of his earliest statements about 'Falling Man' was that all of it — all the sculptures, all the paintings, all the prints — were one work in his own mind."

Now covering , what is now known as Laumeier Sculpture Park opened to the public in 1975. Trova agreed to donate 40 of his large sculptures to help establish the park's collection of outdoor sculptures. Trova's dealer at the Pace Gallery approved of the arrangement, which were contributed upon a formal agreement signed on December 11, 1975.

Despite his early successes, Trova's later constructivist abstract sculptures attracted little critical attention outside of St. Louis.