It is said she "wove linear figures of acrobats and dancers, as slim as spaghetti and as flexible as India rubber, into openwork bronze and steel forms. A friend of Picasso, she was one of those who brought the good word of French modernism to America at the start of World War II".[1]
Biography
Early life and education
James Dawson Callery (1901)
Mary Callery was born June 19, 1903, in New York City and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[2] She was the daughter of Julia Welch and James Dawson Callery, the President of the Diamond National Bank and Chairman of Pittsburgh Railways Company.
After returning to New York, Callery played an instrumental role in the development and growth of ULAE (Universal Limited Art Editions, Inc.). For many years, ULAE primarily published reproductions. It is thought by many that Mary Callery was the first artist to print original work at ULAE.[6] Callery's first edition with ULAE, Sons of Morning, was completed in 1955. The paper that Callery's second edition, Variations on a Theme of “Callery-Léger”, was printed on was called the “Callery gray” was used by Mrs. Grosman for the studio's first printed labels, and is still the trademark gray ULAE uses today.[7]
Callery's sculpture at the Metropolitan Opera
Architect Philip Johnson, whom she had met her in Paris, became a close friend, and he introduced her to major players in the world of business and art in New York, including Nelson and Abby Rockefeller. Wallace Harrison, who along with Johnson, was responsible for the design of Lincoln Center, commissioned Callery to create a sculpture for the top of the proscenium arch at the Metropolitan Opera House.[4] Described as "an untitled ensemble of bronze forms creating a bouquet of sculptured arabesques,"[8] it is perhaps her best known work. It is most affectionately known by The Metropolitan Opera Company members as "The Car Wreck" and more infrequently as "Spaghetti Spoon in Congress with Plumbers Strap."
She was represented by the prestigious art dealers M. Knoedler & Co. and the Curt Valentin Gallery, and she exhibited in more than twenty noteworthy solo and group exhibitions.[9] She became an acquaintance of Georgia O'Keeffe and in 1945 made a sculpture of O'Keeffe's head.
In 1923, she married Frederic R. Coudert Jr., lawyer (and future member of Congress). They had one daughter, Caroline, born in 1926. Mary sought a divorce from Coudert in 1930 and in 1931 married Italian textile industrialist and fine art collector Carlo Frua de Angeli.[10][11] This second marriage also ended in divorce. Following the beginning of the Second World War, she carried on a romantic relationship with architect Mies van der Rohe who designed an artist's studio for her in Huntington, on Long Island, New York.[4]
Later life and death
In her later years, Callery maintained studios in New York, Huntington, Long Island, and Paris.[6] She died on February 12, 1977, at the American Hospital of Paris. She is buried in Cadaqués, Spain.
Solo exhibitions
1944, 1947, 1950, 1952, 1955: Buchholz Gallery, New York City
2000: The Enduring Figure 1890s-1970s: Sixteen Sculptors from the National Association of Women Artists at Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ (December 12, 1999 – March 12, 2000).[14]
^Shirey, David L. (1973-04-10). "A Picasso Sets Mark, 1.1‐Million". The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-06-30. Although it is believed to have been part of Picasso's personal collection for a number of years as well as that of Daniel‐Henry Kahnweiler, his dealer, its history of ownership was not recorded until 1939. At that time the canvas passed into the hands of Mary Callery, a sculptor and friend of the artist. It was nurchased in 1960 by Frua de' Angeli, a Milanese collector. and subsequently, it is understood, was purchased by the Basel dealer Ernst Beyeler, who sold it to the National Gallery
^Hitchcock, Henry-Russell. (1948). Painting toward architecture. [Shows Callery's Water ballet (1947) and Amity (study) (1946), pp. 115-16.] The Miller Company: Meriden, CT. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
