Victoria

About the Art and the Artist.

Seen from behind, the smooth stainless steel trunk of Philip Grausman’s Victoria rises to a height of about ten feet. A giant orb of shiny metal balloons outward. The polished metal surface shows a particular woman in a very smooth stylized form. This massive sculpture weighs about 4500 pounds and stands at an overall height of 14 feet. From the front, the sculpture is clearly a head with a very long neck. The forehead is rounded and smooth,
curving down and back, ending in a neat pageboy coiffure. The eyes are closed and somewhat sunken. A thin ridge rides over the bridge of the nose. This ridge and a broad brow encircle the eyes to form a
mask-like structure. The mouth is closed, with lips neither very full nor very thin. Relatively small bumps represent the ears. High cheekbones, well-proportioned nose and lips, and a rounded chin complete this
female figure. Light and dark areas formed from shadows on the metal give the figure a striking, chiseled appearance.
The figure displays bilateral symmetry from the front and back and appears balanced when viewed from the sides. The elongated neck, closed sunken eye surrounded by furrows, and tiny ear bumps give the
sculpture a surreal appearance. Other features appear proportional and realistic.
Victoria, as well as other Grausman sculptures ,“have been shaped with a silky emphasis on idealization—
contours slope elegantly, symmetry quietly emphasized, with facial features stoic and streamlined. “ Grausman’s sculptures tend toward abstraction. The artist has succeeded in depicting a universal quality that he believes cultures all over the world relate to. His sculptures, including Victoria, have a somewhat anonymous quality, yet their individuality is evident in his titling. Victoria Davila, a Santa Fe sculptor and friend of Grausman’s, modeled for this work. The McNay Art Museum commissioned Grausman to make this stainless steel version based on an existing maquette of Victoria, as well as monumental heads in other materials.

Philip Grausman was born in New York City in 1935, to a family of surgeons. His family encouraged him to become an architect, a practical profession for his early interest in art. He changed his major to art history and began learning the technical fundamentals of drawing, carving stone, and form in metal sculpture. He spent ten years hammering large sheets of metal into sculptures. He studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. He earned his bachelor’s degree in art degree from Syracuse University in 1957, and his master’s degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1959. Grausman studied with the sculptor Jose de Creeft at the Art Students League of New York, working with the form of the human head for over 30 years. While the dynamics of the human head have always inspired Grausman, his fascination with natural shapes has extended to germinating seeds, pods, and animals. The curving planes and angular crevices of his monumental heads evoke both portrait and landscape genre in viewing. Grausman’s heads have been compared to depictions of the human form
from Egyptian antiquity to those by 20th-century masters such as Constantin Brancusi, Gaston Lachaise, and Elie Nadelman. McNay director William Chiego has commented that the sculpture’s monumentality makes him think of “older sculptures such as Egyptian sphinxes or heads on Easter Island.”