New Featured Acquisition
Racine Art Museum Acquires
Rudy Autio Sculpture
The Racine Art Museum (RAM) is pleased to announce Rudy Autio's sculpture Cadenza has just entered the museum's collection. RAM thanks long-time benefactors, David and Jacqueline Charak, for this sculpture, which joins two earlier ceramic works and two drawings by Autio in RAM's collection.  | |
Rudy Autio, Cadenza, 1999, Glazed stoneware
Racine Art Museum, Gift of David and Jacqueline Charak
Photography: Jon Bolton, Racine, WI
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Rudy Autio was one of the most important ceramic sculptors of his generation. He is known for his large works with images of female figures that seem to move across the sculpture's surface as if running or dancing. By focusing on perfect depictions of the human form, many of Autio's compositions recall mythological scenes of nudes in an idealized landscape. In this way, his women echo those that fill the surfaces of ancient Greek and Roman ceramic vessels. Known for his economical use of line in depicting the figure, Autio demonstrates an awareness of the graphics of French modernist artist Henri Matisse. At the same time, both the expressive use of color in his background painting and the dynamic structures of his clay work reveal Autio's intense interest in the works of abstract expressionists-especially the paintings of Willem DeKooning and the ceramic sculptures of Peter Voulkos. By combining these inspirations, Autio was able to create large, vigorous forms whose surfaces are filled with energetic, painted compositions. Autio was born in Butte, Montana, in 1926 and spent most of his career working and teaching in his home state. He received his BA degree from Montana State College, Bozeman, and his MFA from Washington State University, Pullman. Autio was the founding resident artist at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena and headed the ceramics division at the University of Montana for 28 years. He was awarded the prestigious Gold Medal from the American Craft Council in 1999. His works are in important museum collections around the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Autio died in Missoula, Montana, in 2007.
Exhibitions are made possible at Racine Art Museum by: Presenting Sponsors - Karen Johnson Boyd and William B. Boyd, Emile H. Mathis II Estate, in Memory of his Parents: Emil H. and Anna T. Mathis, RAM Society Members, S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., and Windgate Charitable Foundation.
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