Theodore Roszak

Theodore Roszak , 1907-, American sculptor, b. Poland. Commencing his artistic career as a painter, Roszak began in the late 1930s to create constructions in plastics and metal. In the postwar period his style underwent an abrupt change in the direction of irregular and explosive forms, symbolic and fantastic in content. Roszak's Thorn Blossom (Whitney Mus., New York City) and Whaler of Nantucket (1952; Art Inst. of Chicago) are representative examples that carried sculpture toward abstract expressionism .

Bibliography: See study by H. H. Arnason (1956).

Roszak, Theodore (1907–1981). American painter and sculptor, born at Poznań, Poland. He emigrated to the USA with his family in 1909 and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1922–4, and the National Academy of Design, New York, 1925–6. In 1927 he returned to Chicago, where he was a part-time instructor at the Art Institute until 1929. He then went to Europe and worked in Prague, where he was influenced by de Chirico and the Surrealists. In 1931 he returned to the USA and settled in New York. From this point in his career sculpture gradually gained prominence in his work. In 1938–40 he taught at the Design Laboratory, New York, which was inspired by the Bauhaus, and developed an interest in geometrical abstraction that lasted until the mid1940s. From this time he continued to work in welded steel and bronze, but his style changed to one of expressive abstraction involving quasi-organic forms; this brought him within the group of sculptors, including Ferber and Lassaw, whose work paralleled that of the Abstract Expressionist painters. Examples of his work in this mode are Whaler of Nantucket (Art Institute of Chicago, 1952) and Sea Sentinel (Whitney Museum, New York, 1956).

Roszak, Theodore. See Abstract Expressionism.