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Chicago honored the greatest Greek-American sculptor Dimitri Hadzi
Originally published in Athinaika Plus
English translation:
Dimitri Hadzi. Have you ever heard of his name? Probably not. However our compatriot has been one of the greatest representatives of modern sculpting in the USA. He taught for a number of years in Harvard and has given some of his iconic works to the university, as he also has done for MoMA, Metropolitan, Guggenheim, Stanford and Princeton. He lived an exciting life, influenced by all the great events that took place in the 20th century that always sensed the “umbilical cord” which bound him to his homeland: “I am Greek, so it’s totally natural for me to hold a carving chisel” was one of his sayings. Just a few days ago a big exhibition of his took place in gallery Rosenthal in Chicago where his artistic and aesthetic trust was revealed. It’s an attempt of valuation of his great work,18 years after his death. This tribute was supported by the head of our embassy Emmanuel Koumbaraki.
The funniest story connecting Hadzi (whose father is descended from Kastoria) to Greece is about his dearest friend, Nobel price winner Seamus Heaney. In 1995, the Swedish Academia was looking for Heaney to inform him of his triumph the latter was nowhere to be found. That was because he was on a road trip in the Peloponnese region where they wouldn’t listen to the radio due to bad reception. It actually took a few days for the Αcademy to learn of the winner’s whereabouts because his visit in Greece wasn’t able to be precisely verifiable. His hotel reservation was made in Hadzi’s name. Heaney has written some of the most moving pieces regarding his friends art, mentioning the feelings and mental state the sculptures provoke to his viewers.
Born in 1921, in Greenwich village, Hadzi attended a Greek school in the evenings to learn history, mythology and Greek. His talent for painting was noticeable from an early age although he still ended up studying chemistry. In WW2 he served as a communications technician in the Pacific alongside the American troops. After that he decided to become an artist, enrolled in Cooper and came to Athens just a few years later with a Fulbright scholarship. He experienced the classical art of Greece, he traveled to Egypt and then continued on with his studies in Rome. He worked with bronze and stone, heavily influenced by the classical heritage all the while transmitting a different dynamic. In 2000 we were given the chance to view some of his work in Athens. Hopefully we will be able to see them again.
Exhibition News: Dimitri Hadzi at Rosenthal Fine Art, Chicago
ROSENTHAL FINE ART PRESENTS:
Dimitri Hadzi, “Elmo II,” 1959, bronze, Edition of IV, 30 x 24 x 21 in (76.2 x 61 x 53.3 cm)
DIMITRI HADZI: HISTORICAL ECHOES
May 4-June 30, 2023
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 4, 5-8p
Hours: Monday-Friday, 11a-5p
Rosenthal Fine Art, Inc
210 W Superior Street
Chicago
This exhibition marks the first solo survey in Chicago in nearly three decades by one of the most distinguished sculptors of the 20th century. “Dimitri Hadzi: Historical Echoes” features signature works from the artist’s oeuvre dating from the 1950s to the 2000s.
Dimitri Hadzi (1921-2006) is among the most distinguished sculptors of the 20th century. He is the last American modernist. His work is characterized by its unique ability to merge themes and traditions from ancient Hellenic culture–language and attitudes, mythology and theater–with 20th century tenets of Modernism, Surrealism, and Expressionism. While Hadzi's work presents itself in formalist terms, it always remains rooted in meaning drawn from his Greek heritage.
This exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Estate of Dimitri Hadzi.
Dimitri Hadzi in his studio and garden on via Eleonora Pimentel, Rome, with “Elmo II,” 1959, bronze, Edition of IV, 30 x 24 x 21 in (76.2 x 61 x 53.3 cm)
"Dimitri Hadzi's sculptures have the deeply satisfactory, self-sufficiency of all finished work. They do the paradoxical things which the best sculptural forms do...I value Dimitri's oeuvre because of its nice combination of confidence and impersonality, muscle and nimbleness, historical echo and original forthrightness, its excellence on the largest and smallest scales. I value it because I know from looking at it and from observing its maker that it springs from a proverbial need which acts as a kind of sweet torment until it finds its release and equivalent in the silent adequacy of the sculptures themselves."
–Seamus Heaney, poet, Nobel Prize laureate, 1966
Installation images by: @ianacephoto
From the Archive: “Hadzi’s Wood-Fired Stoneware at Kouros Gallery”
Dimitri Hadzi “Vulcan,” 2002, wood-fired stoneware, 66 x 20 x 11 in (167.6 x 50.8 x 27.9 cm)
Originally published in The New York Times
December 27, 2002
by GRACE GLUECK
Kouros Gallery
23 East 73rd Street
Through Jan. 11
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Steeped in the myths and legends of Mediterranean culture while holding on to modernist tradition, Dimitri Hadzi, now 81, is known for his technically accomplished work in bronze and stone. Recently, drawing on his experience of working wax for casting into metal, he has turned to modeling in clay, specifically the medium of wood-fired stoneware.
The emphasis in this show is on the stoneware, publicly shown for the first time, but a number of recent bronzes are also present. The stoneware is more hermetic, more about inwardness, than the relatively open bronzes, which freely interact with the space around them.
Compare, for instance, ''Apollian Libation,'' a black bronze topped by a vessel-like shape that reads as a massive head turned in profile (these pieces hint at figuration) and whose trunk sprouts arm-and-leg-like extensions, with ''Circe,'' a closed unlimbed columnar stoneware piece in three stacked sections that suggests a base and two vessels, one atop the other.
The top section of ''Circe,'' as formidable a presence as the bronze, widens to suggest more an opening within, the cup/head of a mysterious enchantress who closely guards her magic potion. In some smaller works, like the cylindrical ''Pylae II,'' made by rolling a flat into a tube, a slit where the two edges would normally meet runs down the front, giving a glimpse of the inner surface. (The piece, incidentally, somewhat resembles a leg brace.)
If these resolutely ungraceful, clunky works have more hints of the Abstract Expressionist era than the sleeker, less heroic attitudes of current sculpture, why not? They stand fast in their old-fashioned eloquence.
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A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 27, 2002, Section E, Page 46 of the National edition with the headline: ART IN REVIEW; Dimitri Hadzi -- Wood-Fired Stoneware Sculptures With Recent Bronze
Museum News: Gift of Dimitri Hadzi’s Sculpture to Snite Art Museum
Dimitri Hadzi (American, 1921–2006), Crucifix, 1979, bronze with stone base, 21 × 13 × 10 inches (including base). Collection of the Snite Museum of Art at University of Norte Dame. Gift of Cynthia Hadzi (2021.01)
Originally published in the Site Museum of Art Museum Spring 2022 Bulletin
Although he would become one the most beloved and well-traveled pontiffs in history, John Paul II, now Saint John Paul
II, made his first trip to the United States from October 1 – 8 in1979. The trip began in Boston, in no small part owing to the deep ties to Senator Edward Kennedy. However, shortly before the visit it was discovered that a processional cross was needed. Enter the renowned American sculptor, Dmitri Hadzi (1921–2006).
Although his abstract work was included in exhibitions and collections across the globe, Hadzi was also a celebrated studio arts professor at Harvard University.
Hadzi lived and worked for many years in Rome before settling in Boston. Although his language was abstraction, he was influenced by the monumentality of Rome and its history of public art. Hadzi earned an international reputation for his large-scale public projects, so it seems somewhat incongruous that he would be commissioned to create a more intimate-scale figure of the crucified Christ, but his artistic reputation and keen sensitivity to the history of art, were well known and guided the decision.
He met the challenge of both the commission and the aggressive timeline of the impending papal visit with enthusiasm and a can-do spirit. According to a story in the Harvard Crimson on Hadzi and the John Paul II Crucifix: In 1979 the Archdiocese of Boston phoned him 10 days before the Pope was due to arrive to ask him to sculpt a processional crucifix. The artist did it in seven.
Specifically, the commission required the artist to create a sculpture of the crucified Christ that could be mounted to a staff to create a papal Processional Cross. The commission also allowed for an additional cast to function specifically as a sculpture. Dimitri kept that cast his entire life. It is this remarkable object which has recently been gifted to the Museum by his widow, Cynthia.
Attentive to the sculptor’s legacy, Cynthia was made aware of the Museum’s unique commitment to Modern and Contemporary sculpture, and, of course the University of Notre Dame’s Catholic character led to her gracious and insightful donation. In addition to the sculpture itself, the gift includes a variety of early models for the corpus and a myriad of photographic documentation of the artist at work and the sculpture coming into being.
The Museum is deeply grateful to Cynthia Hadzi and our mutual friend and colleague, Crosby Coughlin, for entrusting the University of Notre Dame with this legacy donation.
Article: The Vagaries of Public Art
Fox River Oracle by Dimitri Hadzi was dedicated in Appleton, WI, on June 12, 1987. Courtesy Estate of Dimitri Hadzi, Cambridge, MA.
by Cynthia Hadzi
Apr 28, 2021
Originally Published on fsm: an independent journal for the arts
Contrary to the understanding of many viewers, seemingly enduring public art can be neglected and unmaintained, moved from the specific site for which it was designed, or, in some cases, destroyed. The permanence of such art—even when fabricated in bronze, metal, or stone, is too often illusionary before the forces of change and capital development. Such a threat hangs over a work of public art in the city of Appleton, Wisconsin.
Dimitri Hadzi devoted a significant portion of his four-decade career as a sculptor to the creation of major works of public art that countless citizens view —for example in Rome, Italy; in Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts, for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Federal Office Building; in New York City for Lincoln Center; in San Francisco at the Embarcadero Center; in Portland, Oregon, at the Federal Office Building; in Dallas before the I.M. Pei building; in Toledo, Ohio, a forty-foot-high granite fountain at Owens-Illinois; and in Appleton, Wisconsin, at the entrance to the city. Some of Hadzi’s greatest achievements survive untouched and unthreatened, as with the splendid ecumenical bronze doors he created for the entrance to the only Protestant church in Rome, St. Paul’s Within-the-Walls. During one of the artist’s proudest moments, these doors were dedicated in 1976 by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope’s representative, Cardinal Willebrands. Made for a historic church adorned with mosaics and frescos by the Pre-Raphaelites, the doors appear unlikely to be demolished for commercial purposes, as has been the case with other less fortunate works.
But in 2014, Hadzi’s centerpiece for Harvard Square, Cambridge, a twenty-foot-high mixed-granites “Omphalos”, commissioned by the MBTA in 1985, was removed, because of deferred maintenance by the owners, even after occasional repairs by the artist. A plan for its much-needed restoration, and reinstallation by a private developer in Rockport, Massachusetts, seems thwarted, for this work, seven years after it was removed from its original site, remains in storage.
The vagaries of public art continue. A further Hadzi sculptural installation, comprised as a group made up of basalt stone both polished and natural, was designed for a site in Eugene, Oregon. Until then the artist had been working solely in bronze; however, for this commission he turned to a local material. The completed work was specifically designed for a parkland area close to the Willamette River, and remained on that site for two decades. However, it, too, was subsequently moved—although there is currently good news of a plan to return it to its original site. Such losses to art lovers continue. A granite work commissioned by the General Services Administration outside the courthouse in Birmingham, Alabama, is also in storage. But the reason for this removal was a protest by a State Representative, who claimed (as documented in the press at the time) that the work was a security risk: “a person could hide behind the sculpture and shoot at people as they entered the building.” Despite a rigorous defense in federal court to keep the work on the site for which it was commissioned and created, the protest was successful, and the work remains hidden from the public. The General Services Administration of the Government continues to search for a new suitable site—but has rejected an offer from the Museum of Art in Birmingham to give the Hadzi sculpture a new home.
Another distressing story of aesthetic loss surrounds the removal of a thirty-foot-high Hadzi sculptural fountain in Copley Place, Boston, Massachusetts. That work was a relief, comprising mixed marble and travertine, with a central water element. Working closely for this site-specific art installation with the architects of the new development, Hadzi spent months in Italian quarries with artisans in Carrara and Pietrasanta to choose the many hues of stone he needed from quarries around the world. The completed sculpture was a huge success with the public and was included in untold numbers of celebratory photographs. However, thirty years later new architects and developers determined that an extension to the Copley Place shops and offices was essential, and to make space for these changes they determined that the artwork must go. Despite public dismay, no consideration was given to the value of public art in Boston. In 2017 Hadzi’s fountain sculpture was destroyed, along with the benches that had been installed for the public’s rest and contemplation before it. The art was replaced by a group of very high-end stores, and some offices. As a result, passers-by no longer stop to sit and enjoy the water and the artwork— and to photograph their lives. There is, in fact, no joy in photographing a graduation or wedding celebration in front of empty retail shops. Boston had lost both a space for aesthetic contemplation and for celebration.
Today yet another major Hadzi public art project may be in jeopardy, this time in the City of Appleton, Wisconsin. This work of local limestone/dolomite was situated in an open, grassy space at the entrance to the city, but where construction and development is now being considered. This Appleton sculpture is one of Hadzi’s most successful works, and in creating it he spent time with the artisans at nearby quarries as he selected the stone and developed a particular interest in the area and for its workers. After years developing funding and gathering local support, the community witnessed the dedication of a sculptural work Hadzi named “Fox River Oracle” to honor the local geography. Recognizing the artist’s significant contribution to the area, Lawrence University honored him with a degree of Doctor of Arts. Since he was Professor of the Visual Arts at Harvard University, it was with great pride (and cheers from his students!) that Dimitri Hadzi wore his doctoral cap from Lawrence to Harvard’s annual Commencement for the rest of his life.
News: Sculptor’s stone ‘Gilgamesh’ is installed at Mineralogical Museum
by Alvin Powell, Harvard Staff Writer
October 11, 2012
oet David Ferry had just finished his English translation of “The Epic of Gilgamesh” in 1993 when he walked into the studio of sculptor and Harvard Professor Dimitri Hadzi. A stone sculpture there caught Ferry’s eye, and he asked Hadzi if he could use an image of it on his upcoming book cover.
Hadzi said yes and went a step further, naming the abstract sculpture “Gilgamesh,” after the ancient king of Uruk, tested by the gods in a search for immortality.
Cynthia Hadzi said the statue was a favorite of her husband, who died in 2006. Another favorite of his was Harvard’s Mineralogical and Geological Museum, which he visited regularly for meetings of the Boston Mineralogical Club. So it made sense to her to bring the two together.
“We’d always held onto it as a favorite of his,” she said of the statue. “I felt it needed to be seen by more people.”
Now “Gilgamesh” stands just outside the Mineralogical and Geological Museum’s doorway, in the courtyard between the museum and the Tozzer Library.
Hadzi was a renowned sculptor as well as a professor in Harvard’s Visual and Environmental Studies Department. He worked mostly in bronze, though not exclusively. Examples of his work stand in museums and public spaces around the world. Locally, there is “Omphalos,” in gray and red granite, in Harvard Square, and “Thermopylae,” in bronze, outside the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston.