Peter Agostini

Peter Agostini (1913-1993) was an American sculptor, credited as a Pop Art pioneer of the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. Associated with several New York School artists, including Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning and David Smith, Agostini did not classify himself as Pop. He also "never abandoned the traditional subjects of sculpture like the human head and figure, and particularly the horse."

Frequently praised for his "extremely beautiful and often original" work, Agostini's identity as an artist was long considered a "puzzle." Judith E. Stein in Art in America concurred, writing that "Agostini has always been his own man, an artist whose concern for pure esthetic values has never impeded his search for new sculptural forms or new techniques to achieve them." Largely self-taught, Agostini's early influences included both Elie Nadelman and Alberto Giacometti, but the work he is best known for is characterized by a surreal, even humorous idiosyncratic style that molded "found art," from "'frozen life' pieces, such as clotheslines, pillows, and squeezed inner tubes as well as work that suggested more turbulent themes, such as hurricanes and 'action horses' in plaster." Describing his own work, Agostini emphasized feeling over form: That is the prime thing—to generate “up”—leverage, elevation. The balloons rising, clothes on a line being picked up by the wind. The same with my horses. Whatever use they are, my horses are about flight, bursting out.

Career In 1939, Agostini joined the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project where he worked as both a mold-maker for other sculptors and as a mannequin-maker. That same year, Agostini was also a recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. In 1990, Agostini was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design. His work would go on to be exhibited in four Whitney Biennial shows and, by the end of his career, he had participated in 25 solo shows and more than 100 group shows world-wide.

Galleries A handful of the NYC-based galleries Agostini was associated with include:

Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery Galerie Grimaud Stephen Radich Gallery Anita Shapolsky Gallery Olaf Clasen Gallery Salander O’Reilly Gallery Bernice Steinbaum Gallery Zabriskie Gallery

Collections Agostini's work has been collected by several notable institutions, including the:

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NYC Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC

Personal Peter Agostini is the father of Diana Agostini Whelan of New York City and Celine November of New Jersey.