''70 Sculptors'' is a photograph taken by ''Life'' photographer Herbert Gehr on May 14, 1949. The picture was published by ''LIFE'' in their June 20, 1949, edition, covering most of pages 112 and 113. That the picture used most of two pages was in itself unusual. The photograph was part of the magazine's coverage of the

3rd Sculpture International 3rd Sculpture International was a 1949 exhibition of contemporary sculpture held inside and outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It featured works by 250 sculptors from around the world, and ran from May 15 ...

exhibition, which was organized by the Fairmount Park Art Association (now the

Association for Public Art Established in 1872 in Philadelphia, the Association for Public Art (aPA), formerly Fairmount Park Art Association, is the first private, nonprofit public art organization dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning in the United Stat ...

) and held at the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is an List of art museums#North America, art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at ...

from May 15 to September 11, 1949. The picture shows 70 of the 254 sculptors whose work was being displayed, as well as a fair number of their pieces. The image is anchored by

Bernard Reder Bernard Reder (29 June 1897 – 7 September 1963) was an artist, sculptor, etcher, engraver and architect, born in Czernowitz, Bukovina, (Chernivtsi, Bokovina) part of Austria before World War II and a centre of Jewish and Hasidic culture. His ...

's monumental sculpture ''Wounded Woman.'' Reder is seated in the second row, second seat from the left. Hanging from the ceiling is

Alexander Calder Alexander "Sandy" Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobile (sculpture), mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, hi ...

's ''International Mobile'', while Calder himself sits, almost directly beneath it, in the center of the second row. Besides its showing in ''LIFE'' magazine, a very large printing of the photograph was used as the cover of the exhibition press release. It also was reproduced in Bach's ''Public Art in Philadelphia'' (1992), where it is allotted a full page.Bach, Penny Balkin, ''Public Art in Philadelphia'', Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1992 p. 98.

Sculptors identified

The 70 sculptors depicted remain largely unidentified. Those identified include: *

Jo Davidson Jo Davidson (March 30, 1883 – January 2, 1952) was an American sculptor. Although he specialized in realistic, intense portrait busts, Davidson did not require his subjects to formally pose for him; rather, he observed and spoke with them. ...

* Nathaniel Kaz *

Jacques Lipchitz Jacques Lipchitz (26 May 1973) was a Lithuanian-born French-American Cubist sculptor. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915–16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, domi ...

* Mitzi Solomon *

Carl Milles Carl Milles (; 23 June 1875 – 19 September 1955) was a Swedes, Swedish sculpture, sculptor. He was married to artist Olga Milles (née Granner) and brother to Ruth Milles and half-brother to the architect Evert Milles. Carl Milles sculpted the ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:70 Sculptors Black-and-white photographs Photographs of the United States Art exhibitions in the United States 1949 photographs 1949 in art