Elliot Offner
born 1931, New York, NY
works in Northampton, MA
Figure from the Sea, 1964, bronze, 29 x 19 x 30", DeCordova Permanent Collection 1968.22, Anonymous Gift.
Elliot Offner is a contemporary sculptor who works in the academic tradition, an aesthetic mode based on representation and pre-Modernist ideas about the expressive potential of the human figure. He works in tried and true, time honored sculptural media, including carved wood, clay, plaster, and bronze, and his subjects include both animals and human figures. During his long career, Offner has created a number of public monuments and large-scale religious sculptures. Figure from the Sea is an early work, made during a period when Offner concentrated on solid, motherly, female figures. The expressively modeled surface of this bronze figure, along with her compact mass and vulnerable posture, suggest her recent emergence from water as well as enervated physical and emotional states.
