George Nama, Mod Brutalist Abstract Metal & Painting Heavy Sculpture Bust George Nama, 1973

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George Nama
Genre: Avant-Garde
Subject: Abstract
Medium: Solid Metal Painted White and Black
This is very heavy and solid. I … Read more George Nama
Genre: Avant-Garde
Subject: Abstract
Medium: Solid Metal Painted White and Black
This is very heavy and solid. I don't think it is bronze. it might be aluminum or steel. I believe it is unique.

About Nama: In his studio, Nama paints over the right hand pages with gesso, then uses the pages to draw and paint sketches of forms and shapes as they float through his mind. The process is symptomatic of the way Nama works. He has created over one-hundred sketchbooks, always found objects, sown together, others patched with old gold embossed book covers, or bound with bits of fabric. Nama collected books and made books all his adult life, beginning in 1966, in Paris, France, when he made a book about the Métro, stitched together by himself. He enjoys the intimacy of working with his hands on something he can carry around. He does not transform a preconceived idea or emotion into an image, but he starts with something that is already there. His given object can be a book with blank pages or, for instance, a collection of Voluntaries and Interludes for the Melodeon. It has to be an old book, though, and it should not be precious. Time and wear remove the book from its original usefulness, thus the artist can appropriate the pages for himself, turning them into something new. The flow of a handwriting, a fragment of a headline, a name can anchor a stream of images that have been sparked off by reading, re-reading and contemplating a poem. The drawings in turn trigger further creations of sculptures or etchings.
Nama claims that all his images, whether painting, drawing, etching, or sculpture, are figurative. If they don’t show something that really exists, his configurations “might exist”. George Nama was born in Homestead, across the river from Pittsburgh, which in the early 1950s had its creative moment with a vibrant jazz scene and the Carnegie International exhibitions. He studied at Carnegie Mellon University. n the 1960's Nama worked with William Stanley Hayter at the Atelier 17 in Paris. In 1981 he was elected to the National Academy of Design, New York. Nama has been represented in numerous exhibitions, galleries and public collections, such as The Morgan Library, the Boston Athenaeum, The Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum and the Carnegie Institute. He has also been included in the distinguished international art fairs at Maastricht and the Salon de Dessin in Paris.
From that time onward, he has produced many prints and artist’s books, sometimes collaborating with writers including Samuel Hazo, Yves Bonnefoy, Alfred Brendel, Charles Simic.

Select Museum Collections

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France
Boston Athenaeum
Brooklyn Museum
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
Carnegie Institute
Los Angeles County Art Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Morgan Library and Museum
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Smithsonian, DC
Musée Jenisch, Vevey, Switzerland
Yale University Art Gallery

Select Group Exhibitions

California Palace of the Legion of Honor, “Original Prints” International, San Francisco, California
National Academy of Design, New York
Portland Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Northwest Printmakers
San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, California
“Watercolor USA”, Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, Missouri
Manilla, Philippines and Bucharest, Rumania for State Department
United State Embassies in Europe and Panama
“Thirty Years of American Printmaking”, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
A.D.I .Gallery, San Francisco, “Masters of the Modern Print” Invitational
“Atelier 17”, an exhibition of the history: Elvehjem Art Center, Madison, Wisconsin
“Modern Artists and the Book”, Northeastern University, Boston Invitational
“Contemporary American Prints”, Invitational to tour Great Britain
Prints of the Americas, New Jersey State Museum, Invitational
“Forty New American Prints”. U.S. Cultural Center, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
“Graphik Aus U.S.A. “ Amerika Haus, Vienna, Austria
“Yves Bonnefoy Texte mit Originalgraphik”, Gallery M. Marghescu, Hannover, German
“Abstractions; Directions and Derivations 1940-1980 Dickerson College
“Yves Bonnefoy, Livres et Documents”, 1992, Bibliothèque National, Paris
Exposition au Château de Tours. “Yves Bonnefoy". Écrit Sur L’art at Livrés Aves Les Artistes 1993 (traveling throughout Europe)
Yves Bonnefoy, “La Poésie et Les Arts Plastiques. “Arts and Letters”, Vevey, Switzerland
Art Fairs at Maastricht and the Salon de Dessin in Paris See less