New York, NY – The AXA Gallery will present the first major retrospective of works by the American artist Richard Stankiewicz, known for his sculptures welded from found iron and steel. Stankiewicz was a leading figure of what became known as the “junk aesthetic” of the 1950s and 60s, which elevated found objects into high art. Miracle in the Scrap Heap: The Sculpture of Richard Stankiewicz presents the full range of Stankiewicz’s thirty-year career, and offers a scholarly consideration of his work in relation to the aesthetic attitudes and critical concerns of the post-World War II American art scene.

Richard Stankiewicz Kabuki Dancer, 1956 Iron and steel, 84 x 24 x 26” Collection of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

The exhibition comprises some sixty works, dating from the 1950s to the 1970s, including a selection of his little known early wire and plaster sculptures (created around 1952), his first experiments with junk materials (made from objects ranging from roller skate wheels, boiler tanks, nuts, bolts, to scrap metal), and his later abstract milled-steel works.

Miracle in the Scrap Heap is organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, with generous support provided by The Judith Rothschild Foundation, the Dedalus Foundation, and the Sidney R. Knafel Exhibitions Fund. The AXA Gallery is sponsored by AXA Financial and its subsidiary The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States Additional assistance has been provided by AXA Art Insurance Corporation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated 176 page catalogue published by the University of Washington Press of the same title (176 pages, 180 full color illustrations.ISBN#1-879886-50-2). The catalogue includes essays by curators Adam Weinberg (Addison Gallery of American Art), Emmie Donadio (Middlebury College Museum of Art), as well essays by Martin Friedman (Director Emeritus of the Walker Art Center) and Jonathan Wood (Research Coordinator for the Henry Moore Institute in London). The book is available at Gateway Newsstand in the Equitable Atrium, 787 Seventh Avenue.

Richard Stankiewicz Family Portrait, 1954 Steel and found objects Weatherspoon Art Museum, The University of North Carolina

Richard Stankiewicz (1922–1983, pronounced “stang·KAY·vitch”), played an important part in redefining art in New York in the 1950s. Stankiewicz came to prominence with the second generation of the New York School, among which were artists who served in World War II and studied art on the GI Bill. A student of Hans Hoffman, Stankiewicz was a founding member of The Hansa Gallery, named for his teacher. Most of the painters in this group were Abstract Expressionists, but Stankiewicz’s sculpture was ostensibly figurative. Like Alexander Calder and David Smith, he used modern industrial materials in his works. But instead of using freshly fabricated steel, Stankiewicz chose to weld together odds and ends of useless, rusted machinery, transforming objects of little intrinsic value into thoughtful and often witty artistic constructions.

Accordingly to the exhibition’s curator, Emmie Donadio, Stankiewicz conveyed a sense of presence in his configurations by bringing to life the inert materials he used in making them. He based his work on cubist structural principles and a Surrealist inspired sense of fantasy. This basis, combined with his use of junk or “derelict” materials, made him a prominent figure in art in the 1950s. Writing in Art News, January 1953, critic Sidney Geist hailed Stankiewicz’s work as nothing short of a “miracle in the scrap heap.”

In his sculpture, Stankiewicz uniquely combines intellect and formal invention with wit and humor. His rusty, abject looking works wryly conjure figures – dancers, soldiers, politicians, birds, plants, and a host of other biomorphic associations. As Fairfield Porter wrote in 1959, the ambiguity of his sculpture “gives it a mischievous life of its own, a resistance to classification, a stubborn humor that comes from the form contradicting its function.”

Richard Stankiewicz Chain People I, 1960 Iron and steel, 50 x 16 x 17” Private Collection, Courtesy of Zabriskie Gallery

Addison Gallery of American Art, which opened in 1931 and is devoted exlusively to American art, is a department of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. The museum's purpose is to acquire, preserve, interpret, and exhibit works of art for the education and enjoyment of local, regional, national and international audiences, including the students, faculty, and community of Phillips Academy, and other students, teachers, scholars, and the general public.

AXA Gallery presents works from all fields of the visual arts, with a special emphasis placed on exhibitions that would not otherwise have a presence in the city. The AXA Gallery is located in the atrium lobby of Equitable Tower, 787 Seventh Avenue at 51st Street, in New York City. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11am - 6pm, and Saturday, noon to 5pm. The Gallery is closed on Sundays. Admission is free.