Stadio dei Marmi (2) male athlete mosaics from the Physical Academy

The Academy of Physical Education, in Rome (Italy),  was built almost a century ago. It is now the seat of CONI, the Italian Olympic Committee. It is located close to the Stadio Dei Marmi. So the students could exercise and train just next to it. It contains a covered swimming pool, previous class buildings, pathways, etc. The School became the most important center for the training of the male leadership of the Youth organisations under Mussolini era.

Some of the lithostratos (in Greek 'covered in stone' or paths in stone' or 'pavement' or 'pathways') from the obelisk to the Stadio dei Marmi is made in black and white mosaic ('tesseras' in Italian) representing athlètes performing various sports.

Most of them have been executed by Angelo Canevari (1901-1955) who did himself the drawings, with the help of painters.

 In the covered swimming pool, he also designed the colored mosaics and large wall paintings.

Stadio dei Marmi, superb collection of male athletes sculptures (1)

If you want to admire nice male Olympic athletes sculptures, we suggest you travel to Rome (Italy) where is probably the largest outdoor collection of double-than-life-size (12 feet) white marble sculptures, most of them naked or with just some accessories. Just go to their Stadio dei Marmi (Marbles' stadium), in the North of the city.

White marble sculpture detail - photo by Petr Svarc

White marble sculpture detail - photo by Petr Svarc

 

It is located in the 'Foro Italico', a large sport complex which includes a running track, a soccer field, the Sports stadium, and an Olympic stadium, all designed in the 1920s by Enrico Del Debbio, and built during Mussolini's fascist period in Italy.

 

 

It is a beautiful location on the banks of the Tiber river, surrounded by the nice hill of Monte Mario. Some bronze fig leaves have been added to cover the athletes' nudity.

Next to it was the Academy of Physical Education, which today is the seat of the Italian Olympic Committee. We will see in another post some mosaics from that Academy building.

Handball player - Sculpture by Bernardo Morescalchi - 1931 - photo by Petr Svarc

 

Archer - Sculpture by Bernardo Morescalchi (1895-1975) - 1932

 

It took 8 years to be achieved. Each sculpture was offered by a province of Italy. The stadium was inaugurated in 1932.

 

Ancient Warrior - sculpture made by Aroldo Bellini (1902-1984)  - 1932

 

More recently, it hosted some of the field hockey preliminaries for the 1960 Summer Olympics, and the Stadio dei Marmi was also the host for the 2009 World Aquatics Championship's opening ceremony.

 

Hercules - Sculpture made by Silvio Canevari (1893-1932) - 1931

 

Adonis Art : London's only gay male art gallery

To find male figurative art works in London, like paintings, watercolors, drawings, pastels or sculpture, we suggest you visit Adonis Art gallery. Their website mentions they ''specialize in fine antique and contemporary works of art that celebrate the male body in all of its strength and beauty.”

Adonis Art gallery website current cover (detail)

This gallery, currently in Earls Court since end 1996, was founded by Stewart Hardman one year before in a small space on Kings Road. When he opened it, the gallery was specialized in antique male bronze statues and old drawings of male figures, then a few painters focussing on the male body asked him to represent them, as there were not many places in the world to display male figurative art. Hence the move to a larger space which allowed him to show more contemporary works together with past artists' pièces.

The story behind the creation of the gallery is amazing! Steward Hardman, as he tells the story in the 'Art of Man' magazine, explains that he was trying to find a 'niche market' that suited him. And it was during his almost last holiday trip (as he had no more money from his antique's business which was going very bad!) that he found his idea!
He went to Egypt, sailing on a felucca on the Nile with a handsome young boatman, and seeing him in his brilliant white jellaba standing on the prowl, with the sun shining through, silhouetting his superb physique, he thought:  'Why does no one deal in male art ?' He went back to London, borrowed money, and opened his gallery! 

Stewart Hardman organizes many exhibitions (he did more than 150 so far!), and represents some famous artists like Cornelius McCarthy Andrew Potter, Miles Anthony. Not much sculptures, but you can still find some terracotta works, pewter, acrylic resin, bronze resin, and real bronze. Either from contemporary artists, or from last century.

As an example, the two sculptures below (for sale at the gallery), on the same theme of the 'Fisher Boy'. The first one is from the French Francisque Joseph Duret (1804-1865), who is the son of another French sculptor (François-Joseph Duret).

Fisher boy, by Francisque Joseph Duret (1804-1865)

And the second one is from Louis Edmond Laforesterie, born in Port au Prince (Haiti) in 1837, who pursued sculpture training in Paris, where he died in 1894. Adonis website mentions that little of his work can can be seen today, but Laforesterie did a large white marble statue called 'La Vigne et l'Ormeau' (a Bacchante) which sold for close to 100.000 USD at Sotheby's in 2001. (Picture of it can be seen here.)
 

'Fisher boy' by Louis Edmond Laforesterie - Paris 1875

 

Sources :
- Adonis Art Gallery. Here is the Adonis Art gallery website.

- David Jarrett article in the Archive, N.11, Autum & Winter 2003, from Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay Art. David Jarrett is specialized in male photography. Discover his works in his website.

- Interview of Stewart Hardman in 'The Art of Man', (2nd edition - Fall 2010) quarterly magazine published by Firehouse Publishing, specialized in male figurative art. This is the 'Art of Man magazine website.'

Male figurative art gallery : Mooiman gallery in Holland

The Mooiman gallery (Mooi in Dutch language means cute!)  in Holland is specialized in male art / gay art so you will be sure to see lots of male figurative art in all types of media in that commercial gallery, one of the very few in Europe. It is located in Groningen, 2 hours train North of Amsterdam.

Mooiman promotes close to 60 artists from many countries, and organizes regular exhibitions. They maintain an active presence at Art fairs.  Click here for their website.   

 



You will find below a few names of artists who created gay or male sculptures and are represented by Mooiman gallery.  I will come back in future posts to show more works of some of these sculptors.

 

Marcel Julius Joosen : Dutch, born in 1943, he considered being a priest but decided to pursue his passion for sculpture. He sculpts nude men, and a lot of African man, to celebrate their beauty. 

 

Ivo Blanck, German sculptor, made this 'Lust und Last"

Dennis Coenraad, Dutch sculptor, created this 'Approaching silence'.

Hay Wijnoven, Dutch artist, graphic designer, did many sculptures as well, such as this 'Huber' in bronze, sitting on a Belgian limestone.

Gay male art galleries & museums : the Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art (MoGLA)

Today, male sculptures with a homoerotic/gay angle, and sculptures expressing male love, can also be seen in specialized art galleries and museums, either permanently or during specific shows and exhibitions, at least in USA and Europe, as we will see in some future posts.
 
Below contemporary male torso for example, has been done on marble by the American self-taught sculptor Douglas Holtquist, who is also an expert in the Ikebana art! (Japanese flower composition).
 
Holtquist work was displayed in the Spring 2008 edition of The Archive, which is the rich & interesting quarterly journal of the MoGLA.  MoGLA stands for Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art, the successful and patient tranformation of the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation.


Douglas Holtquist - Male torso - Picture from Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation -The Archive Spring 2008



Cover of the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation Spring 2008 edition of The Archive 

The first time I entered the Leslie-Lohman gay art foundation in New York (as it was called at that time, before to be transformed into the Mogla), was in the early 90's, twenty years ago, so well before I started sculpting. I was thrilled, as a young European man, to enter with my boyfriend in that building basement on Prince Street, to see so many drawings, paintings, watercolors, all gathered in one place, available to see, without commercial pressure and with such a gracious host.

We bought a very nice watercolor from Mc Willie Chambers that is still at our home today. We went back another year, still at their same initial location, and we bought another piece, from William Ronin, New York artist born in 1903.

In 2006, the foundation moved to a nice ground floor location on 26, Wooster Street (SoHo area). And has been transformed into the first Museum dedicated to Gay & Lesbian Art, officially recognized by the New York city.

 

The MoGLA main objective is to put together and exhibit art created by gay artists or art about gay world in general. The museum was created to provide a space for art that is clearly gay and frequently denied access to regular galleries, and regular exhinitions are programmed. This is facilitated by their impressive collection of 22000 paintings, drawings, photographies, prints and sculptures. Famous artists are part of it, like Andy Warhol, George Platt Lynes, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean Cocteau etc.
                                     
The 2 L in the above logo come from Frederic "Fritz" Lohman and Charles W. Leslie. They collected art for many years, organized their first exhibition of gay art in their loft in 1969 to help artist's friends lacking a space to display their work. This was a big success. Then they opened their art gallery, which closed in the 1980s because of aids affecting many of these artists and gay customers. Their foundation was created in 1989.
Click on their website if you want to know more, visit them, etc.

George Minne and his kneeling youths (2)

(Below biography extracts are from Helke Lauwaert work.)

''With the Fountain with Kneeling Youths, Minne established his name abroad, thanks to Van de Velde and Meier-Graefe, specifically in Austria and Germany. He first presented the Fountain with the five identical youths for exhibition in 1899 in Brussels at La Libre Esthéthique. After this, the work is to be seen in an altered form at the exhibitions in Vienna, Budapest and Venice.

At the Wiener Secession of 1900, Minne is one of the main artists in the exhibition and in addition to the plaster model of The Fountain are also 12 sculptures by Minne to be seen, in plaster, marble, bronze and wood, in addition to one woodcut. With his delicate, inwardly turning youthful figures, Minne closely adhered to the Jugendstil and the art-nouveau aesthetic of the fin de siècle in Vienna. His influence on artists such as Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) and Egon Schiele (1890-1918) and later also on Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919) is unmistakable."
                              

Wilhelm Lehmbruck, 'Head of a girl, turning', 1913 - Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent.

             
"In the appreciation of Minne by the Viennese avant-garde, the Jewish mecenas and industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer played an important role. In addition to works by Klimt, Jan Toorop (1859-1928)and Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), he possessed at the time the largest private collection of sculptures by Minne, plus a sketchbook of the artist. The sketchbook dates from ca. 1883-1888 and is now found in the Albertina in Vienna.

From 1900 on until World War I, Minne would be represented nearly annually at exhibitions in Germany: Berlin, Munich, Mannheim, Weimar and Dusseldorf. In leading, German newspapers such as Pan and Die Kunst, photos of his work appeared, through which his recognition abroad grew. With the help of Henry Van de Velde, the German industrial and mecenas Karl Ernst Osthaus gave Minne a project in 1900 for the Folkwang Museum in Hagen (now in the like-named Museum in Essen) to produce a marble version of the Fountain with Kneeling Youths. ''

2 Kneeling Young Men by George Minne, during Manheim Art exhibition, 1907

                                       
"After the war, Minne gave lessons at the Academy of Ghent for a year. The fame that he had gained before the war in his own country has not diminished. In 1930, the first published monograph on him by Leo Van Puyvelde appears, supplemented with a catalog of his oeuvre. On 25 April 1931, Minne is given the title of baron. Various official projects, such as the Queen Astrid Memorial in Antwerp, were entrusted to him. Minne remained active as a sculptor and drawer.
George Minne died on 18 February 1941 at the age of 74. A Woman and Child by his own hand adorns his grave in Sint-Martens-Latem. Also, in the same year a retrospective exhibition of his work was held in the Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels.''
            
Video : The link below allows you to see several of George Minne drawings and sculptures.
George Minne video                                  
 

George Minne and his kneeling youths (1)

George Minne, Belgian sculptor, contemporary of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, was close from my grand father. I became aware of George Minne work and his kneeling naked young men thanks to my father. Although I would not classify this sculptor in the 'gay world', some of his sculpting work, which got international recognition, could be of interest by his strong ability to express a fragile masculine beauty with his famous naked kneeling young men sculptures, as seen below.

Detail - Fountain with Kneeling boys - Brussels, Belgium- Picture by Martin Beek

All biography extracts are strongly inspired from Helke Lauwaert excellent work (Art historian, she also wrote a book about Theo Van Rysselbergue).

George Minne was born in Ghent, Belgium, on 30 August, 1866 as the son of an architect. We do not know a lot about Minne's childhood years. He got a strict discipline at school, this may have given him his introverted nature. He did many drawings, and aged 13, he left the primary school and went to the Academy of Fine Arts of Ghent.

Aged 17, George Minne decided to take painting lessons at the Academy of Fine Arts of Ghent. His parents did not agree with this choice, and forced him to start architecture lessons which was supposed to provide more financial stability, and with a better social image. But George Minne quickly went back to his artistic inclination. As a student, he met the painter Valerius De Sadeleer who became a friend. 

George Minne



Three years later, aged 20, he left the Academy and got a working artist studio in the old centre of Ghent. The artist developed a very expressive, direct, simple language. And as he became friend with key French speaking symbolists writers from Ghent, like Maurice Maeterlinck, they influenced each other and Minne started an ever more introverted kind of sculpture.
                                        

Minne first exhibition happened when he was 23, at the Tri-Annual Salon of Ghent. He presented two sculptures. One is shown below, called "Small Injured Figure". It was the first example of the sculptor's solitary naked youth with spread legs.This exhibition gave him very positive support from Emile Verhaeren in the leading art newspaper L'Art Moderne.

Minne liked Auguste Rodin style, and reportedly wanted to work with him, but it is said that Rodin, seeing some of Minne's work, mentioned he could not further teach the young artist any more.
Minne moved to Brussels end of 1895, were he started an exceptionally creative period, with for example the below sculptures.

The Prodigal Son, 1896

Man With a Waterskin, 1897, Museum of fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium.

His 'chef d'œuvre' is considered to be the 'Fountain with kneeling youths' from which many versions exist and were created (in plaster, bronze, stone). The first work was done in 1898.

George Minne - Fountain with kneeling boys

Fine Arts Museum - Ghent, Belgium

George Minne - Fontaine aux Agenouillés 1898 - Brussels, Belgium

Detail from George Minne - Fountain with Kneeling Boys - Brussels, Belgium

In Brussels he met famous people from the art world, like Henry Van de Velde one of the founder of the Art Nouveau in Belgium, he also met the sculptor Constantin Meunier, and the art critic and art nouveau expert Julius Meier-Graefe, who would play an important role in Minne's reputation abroad as we will see in our next post.