Mary Callery

Mary Callery (June 19, 1903 – February 12, 1977) was an American artist known for her Modern and Abstract Expressionist sculpture. She was part of the New York School art movement of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

It is said she "wove linear figures of acrobats and dancers, as slim as spaghetti and as flexible as India rubber, into openwork bronze and steel forms. A friend of Picasso, she was one of those who brought the good word of French modernism to America at the start of World War II".

Biography

Early life and education

Mary Callery was born June 19, 1903, in New York City and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Julia Welch and James Dawson Callery, the President of the Diamond National Bank and Chairman of Pittsburgh Railways Company.

Callery studied at the Art Students League of New York (1921–1925) with Edward McCartan and moved to Paris in 1930. From 1930 to 1940, Callery worked in France, where she met and became friends with Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, Alexander Calder, Aristide Maillol, and other leading artists of the day and collected their art. During this same period, she also developed her talents as a modern sculptor, studying privately under Jacques Loutchansky.

Career When Germany occupied Paris during World War II, she returned to the United States with "more Picassos than anyone in America" according to Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art. Callery's first edition with ULAE, Sons of Morning, was completed in 1955. The paper that Callery's second edition, Variations on a Theme of “Callery-Léger”, was printed on was called the “Callery gray” was used by Mrs. Grosman for the studio's first printed labels, and is still the trademark gray ULAE uses today.

Callery's sculpture at the Metropolitan OperaArchitect Philip Johnson, whom she had met her in Paris, became a close friend, and he introduced her to major players in the world of business and art in New York, including Nelson and Abby Rockefeller. Wallace Harrison, who along with Johnson, was responsible for the design of Lincoln Center, commissioned Callery to create a sculpture for the top of the proscenium arch at the Metropolitan Opera House. it is perhaps her best known work. It is most affectionately known by The Metropolitan Opera Company members as "The Car Wreck" and more infrequently as "Spaghetti Spoon in Congress with Plumbers Strap."

She was represented by the prestigious art dealers M. Knoedler & Co. and the Curt Valentin Gallery, and she exhibited in more than twenty noteworthy solo and group exhibitions. She became an acquaintance of Georgia O'Keeffe and in 1945 made a sculpture of O'Keeffe's head.

In 1945, she was invited to join the summer faculty of Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where she taught alongside Josef Albers, Robert Motherwell, Lyonel Feininger, and Walter Gropius. This second marriage also ended in divorce. Following the beginning of the Second World War, she carried on a romantic relationship with architect Mies van der Rohe who designed an artist's studio for her in Huntington, on Long Island, New York. 1949: 3rd Sculpture International at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1956: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York 1958: Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; Brussels World's Fair 2000: The Enduring Figure 1890s-1970s: Sixteen Sculptors from the National Association of Women Artists at Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ (December 12, 1999 – March 12, 2000).

Collections Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut CIT Corporation The Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan Eastland Shopping Center, Detroit Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC Indianapolis Museum of Art Laughlin Children's Center, Sewickley, Pennsylvania The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut The Museum of Modern Art, New York City National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City The Metropolitan Opera House, New York City The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection, Albany, NY