Sculptor Victor Riu Exhibits at Lehigh in Show Organized by Francis Quirk

 

In March of 1962, sculptor Victor Riu would have his second show in twelve years at Lehigh University Art Galleries. At the time he was 74 years old. Works were borrowed from museums  including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and private collections.

Riu made Coopersburg, Pennsylvania world-famous by promoting the igneous blue-black granite (Gabrogrannidiorite) that is eponymous with the town. Coopersburg granite is an extremely hard material generally avoided by sculptors because of the difficulty of working with it. The stone is often compared to Egyptian basalt that has endured in sculptured form for 5000 years. The beautiful granite takes a high polish and resists staining.

Riu’s sculptures include figures of mathematical concepts such as the Moebius curve, emotions, or animals such as birds and cats. In an article published at the time Riu said his aim was to create a “fluid form pleasing to the eye from every angle.” Riu went on “Sometimes it is necessary to change the form. If a line is lost or vague, I must find it. Frequently, the raw stone suggest – but never dictates to me.”

Photos of a Riu sculpture provided by a Pennsylvania collector. 

Lehigh Professor Francis Quirk was quoted as saying “Nobody has ever handled this high-density material better than Riu. His fluid moving planes of stone seem to exceed the limitations of the material.”

Born in Trieste, Italy, in 1887, Mr. Riu studied at the Scuola per Capi d'Arte in Trieste from 1899 to 1903. Afterwards he worked in his grandfather and uncle's Studio of Fine Monuments before coming to the United States in 1906 at the age of 19. He was an ornamental stone worker on projects like the New York Public Library, the new Grand Central Station, and the Chicago Court House. It would be an interesting historical tidbit if he worked on the famous lions: Prudence and Fortitude. He continued his work in Barre,Vermont where he also ran a farm and experimented with plaster sculpture.

Still later, he became superintendent of the Montpelier  (VT.) Granite Co. whose memorials and monuments were sent throughout the U.S.  In 1922 he moved to Coopersburg and bought the Coopersburg Granite Co. The famous Coopersburg “blue-black” granite was shipped to users throughout the world.

Sculptors also came to Coopersburg to see the stone and Riu worked with many of note including Wharton Esherick, Jose de Rivera and Ahron Ben Shmuel. Schmuel’s Fairmont Park sculpture of the Boxers is made of Coopersburg granite. Rui collaborated with these luminaries on monuments to Connie Mack, Sherwood Anderson, World War II heroes and other notables. Jose deRivera also exhibited at Lehigh and is on our agenda for a dedicated blog post. 

Rhythm by Victor Riu   Photo courtesy of Woodmere Art Museum 

Riu’s sculptures are in several museum collections including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Woodmere Art Museum and numerous private collections. In addition to exhibits at Lehigh University Art Galleries and the Woodmere Art Museum he showed at galleries in New York, Boston, San Francisco and Philadelphia. 

Victor Riu   Resurgent Harmony 1957   Photo courtesty of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art

Victor Riu’s business continues to operate and you can learn more about them at this site- Coopersburg Granite Company.

Walter Murch Exhibits at Lehigh University and Quirk Writes Review for Bethelehem Newspaper

We continue our exploration of artists whoe showed their work at Lehigh Univeersity Art Galleries in exhibitions organized by Francis Quirk. Walter Murch's work was included in the annual exhibition of contemporary works in both 1965 and 1966. But in the spring of 1966, Murch would have a solo show at Lehigh on exhibit from March 13 through April 17. Francis Quirk reviewed the exhibit for the local paper, the Bethlehem Globe-Times.

Walter Tandy Murch (August 17, 1907 – December 11, 1967) 

Walter Murch  Self Portrait

Murch was a painter whose still life paintings of machine parts, brick fragments, clocks, broken dolls, hovering light bulbs and glowing lemons are an unusual combination of realism and abstraction. 

Murch was born and grew up in Toronto, Ontario.He attended the Ontario College of Art in the mid-1920s, studying under Arthur Lismer, a member of the Group of Seven, a group of Impressionist to Post-Impressionist painters mostly active from 1910 to 1940. Murch moved to New York City in 1927 and studied at the Art Students League of New York under Kenneth Hayes Miller and later, with Arshile Gorky at the Grand Central School of Art.

In 1929 he married Katharine Scott, and from then until 1950 Murch supported himself and his family through a number of jobs on the fringes of the art world including department-store window design, book illustration, restaurant murals, freelance illustrations (notably covers for the magazines Fortune and Scientific American) and advertising commissions while he continued painting and studying contemporary art. Other paid work included windows at Lord & Taylor, and the Viennese Roof at the St. Regis Hotel. 

April 1949 Scientific American Magazine Cover by Walter Murch

October 1949 Fortune Magazine Cover by Walter Murch

June 1947 Fortune Magazine Cover - Fine Chemicals by Walter Murch

Viennese Roof at the St. Regis Hotel New York, NY

In 1941 Betty Parsons presented Murch's first one-man exhibition at the Wakefield Gallery in New York City. When Parsons established her own gallery in the mid-1940s, Murch moved with her, mounting one-man shows every two years until his death in 1967. After 1950, he also began teaching at Pratt Institute and later at New York University, Columbia University and Boston University. In 1966, Murch had a one man show at Lehigh University under the aegis of Francis Quirk. Later that year Daniel Robbins at The Rhode Island School of Design organized Murch's first major retrospective, a year before his death from a heart attack on December 11, 1967.

Murch's style remains difficult to classify, although he has been variously described as a Magic Realist, Surrealist, Romantic Realist or just plain Realist. For subjects, he favored motors, tools and scientific equipment which would often be incongruously arranged with more traditional still life elements such as fruit, bread and fragments of rock. These mysterious and eccentric juxtapositions seem to imply poetic associations although Murch himself tended to dismiss this sort of interpretation of his work, saying of the objects he chose to paint that they were simply an excuse to paint. This response seems perfectly appropriate because the broken surface of his work gives it a visibility equal to the virtual image (the objects depicted), which themselves are depicted with undistorted clarity and geometric precision. This creates a fascinating ambiguity.

Murch's works are in numerous museum collections around the country. Both his personal art and his business commissions occasionally come up for auction.

Through the catalog published by the the Rhode island School of Design at the Walter Murch Retrospective, we were able to trace down images of two Murch paintings that were exhibited at Lehigh.

Radio by Walter Murch

Doll by Walter Murch