A designer and sculptor, Paul Evans was a wild card of late 20th century modernism. A leading light of the American Studio Furniture movement, Evans’s sideboards, credenzas, coffee tables and other work manifests a singular aesthetic sense, as well as a seemingly contradictory appreciation for both folk art forms and for new materials and technologies.
Evans’s primary material was metal, not wood, which was favored by his fellow studio designers, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, neighbors George Nakashima and Phillip Lloyd Powell. He trained in metallurgy and studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the famed crucible of modern design and art in suburban Detroit. For a time early in his career, Evans also worked at Sturbridge Village, a historical “living museum” in Massachusetts, where he gave demonstrations as a costumed silversmith.
Evans’s earliest work unites these influences. The pieces that made his reputation are known as “sculpted-front” cabinets: wood cases faced with box-like high-relief patinated steel mounts laid out in a grid pattern. Each mount contains a metal emblem, or glyph, and the effect is that of a brawny quilt.
Evans’s later work falls into three distinct style groups. His sculpted-bronze pieces, begun in the mid-1960s, show Evans at his most expressive. He employed a technique in which resin is hand-shaped, and later sprayed with a metal coating, allowing for artistic nuance in the making of chairs, tables and case pieces. Later in the decade and into the 1970s, Evans produced his Argente series for celebrated manufacturer Directional (a brand known to vintage mid-century modern furniture collectors everywhere): consoles and other furniture forms that feature aluminum and pigment-infused metal surfaces welded into abstract organic forms and patterns.
Last, Evans's Cityscape design series — a milestone in the history of brutalist design — meshed perfectly with the sleek, “high tech” sensibility of the later ’70s. Evans constructed boxy forms and faced them with irregular mosaic patterns that mixed rectangular plaques of chromed steel, bronze or burlwood veneer. These, like all of Paul Evans’s designs, are both useful and eye-catching. But their appeal has another, more visceral quality: these pieces have clearly been touched by an artist’s hand.
Find a collection of authentic Paul Evans furniture today on 1stDibs.
Tony Rosenthal " INGATHERING MAQUETTE" Welded Steel Architectural Sculpture
By Tony Rosenthal
Located in Chicago, IL
Tony Rosenthal "INGATHERING MAQUETTE" Welded Steel Architectural Sculpture Untitled. Welded steel sculpture with oxidized surface finish compose...
Steel
Diane Cooper Mixed Media over Wood Wall Mounted Bundle Sculpture
Located in Chicago, IL
Diane Cooper Mixed Media over Wood Wall Mounted Bundle Sculpture, From Ruth Horwich collection. Textures Canvas and Metal About Diane Cooper: Inspired by the visual culture in Japan,...
Metal
Stone Sculpture
Located in Chicago, IL
Solid stone sculpture, polished stone sculpture.
Stone
Tony Rosenthal Sculpture
By Tony Rosenthal
Located in Chicago, IL
Rosenthal bronze sculpture. 1965, untitled. Stamped "Rosenthal, 1965." Nice original patina.
Bronze
Tony Rosenthal Tabletop Bronze Sculpture
By Tony Rosenthal
Located in Chicago, IL
Tony Rosenthal Tabletop Bronze Sculpture Untitled. Vertically oriented black painted bronze sculpture with three interior voids with irregular edges welded to base, signed, circa 19...
Metal
Mario Dal Fabbro Sculpture
By Mario Dal Fabbro
Located in Chicago, IL
Mario Dal Fabbro - No. 20 Signed Mario Dal Fabbro Multi-disciplinary artist Mario Dal Fabbro was born in Cappella Maggiore, Italy in 1913. He trained in his family's furniture design shop prior to attending both the R. Superior Institute for Decorative and Industrial Arts in Venice as well as Magistero Artistico, graduating with high honors in 1937. From the years of 1938-1948 Dal Fabbro immersed himself in furniture design and academia. Primarily, he designed furniture for both design houses and private clients. Del Fabbro participated in the Triennale de Milano competition in both 1939 and 1947 and won the Ganzatti Contest for 'Standardization of Furniture". During this period he also contributed to the Italian design publications Domus and Stile and the French magazine L'Architecture D'Aujourd'hui. In 1948 Mario Dal Fabbro immigrated to America and began designing furniture for mass production, working for J.G. Furniture in New York and Quakertown, PA. During his years steady employ, he published Modern Furniture: Its Design And Construction in 1949 and contributed regularly to The New York Times and House and Garden. His subsequent publications spanned a little over the decade and included How to Build Modern Furniture (1951), How to Make Built-In Furniture (1955), and How to Make Children's Furniture and Play Equipment...
Wood
Mid-Century Modern Bronze Sculpture, Signed, Europe, 1970
Located in London, GB
Hand-sculpted and bronze cast sculpture is like a landscape that can be used as a ashtray or paper weight is made in the 1970's and is signed. The shape is square and the pattern loo...
Bronze
1980 Italy Bronze Abstract Sculpture Urano Palma Tavolo Del Politico E Sedia
By Urano Palma
Located in Brescia, IT
Urano Palma is an Italian artist who starts to create his artworks following the philosophy of Lucio Fontana. He specially worked to the sculptured furniture, inventing a casting te...
Bronze
Shun Kumagai Contemporary Japanese Cast Glass Box Sculpture
Located in Oakland, CA
Incredible modernist cast glass box sculpture by noted contemporary Japanese artist, Shun Kumagai resembling an old Roman glass vessel from another time. Depending on the light, thes...
Art Glass
Sculpture "Pierre de rose claire" By Yasuo Mizui, Bronze 1/5, 1989
Located in Brussels, BE
Sculpture "Pierre de rose claire" By Yasuo Mizui, Bronze 1/5, 1989
Bronze
1970s Gabriella Crespi Acrylic & Bronze Box
By Gabriella Crespi
Located in Autonomous City Buenos Aires, CABA
Acrylic box by Gabrielle Crespi, 1970s The box features a rectangular design with rounded corners, combining the transparency of acrylic with a patinated bronze band that surrounds i...
Bronze
Casket Sculpture Model Sasso by Giorgio Vigna
Located in Asti, Piemonte
Casket sculpture model Sasso designed and produced by Giorgio Vigna. In copper, signature and date on the inner edge . Biography Giorgio Vigna was born in Verona in 1955 and artistically formed among his hometown, Venice, Rome and Milan. He is an artist who, at the boundary between reality and imagination, creating natural forms capable of manifesting primary and primordial aspects. Adventures of earth and water, fire and wind where combines natural and artificial, poor and precious. Vigna moves on the border between the real and the imaginary, between what is and what appears. His works, from sculptures to jewelry, the works on paper or the site specific installations, reflect the breadth and depth of his constant research. Using various materials such as glass, metals and paper, treated always new and surprising mode. Vigna explores and seeks them to reveal hidden possibilities.The forms are the primary expression of the elements he works with. Strong and natural, universal and timeless, full of symbolic meanings. In 2003 Giorgio Vigna created the site specific installation La Radura for Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu which started the Olnick Spanu Art Program. In 2013 the Museum of Castelvecchio in Verona hosted the exhibition Stati Naturali, for which Giorgio Vigna has created for the fountain of Carlo Scarpa the permanent installation in glass Acquaria, donated to Verona Municipality. In 2017 he has created for the Galleria dell’Accademia in Venice the work Fuochi di Rugiada, made by Vetreria VENINI. Since 2018 he has been called to be part of the Scientific Committee of Le Stanze del Vetro, a project of the Giorgio Cini Foundation with the support of Pentagram Stiftung. In 2022 he donated his thirty-year archive of drawings and sketches linked to his experience with the materia of glass to the Giorgio Cini Foundation onlus. In June 2023 it inaugurated the solo exhibition Analogie at the Eremitani Museum in Padua, the natural continuation of the journey begun in 2022 with the Sassi exhibition at the Oratorio di San Rocco in Padua. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in Argentina, Austria...
Copper
