Vincent Glinsky Biography

Vincent Glinsky

American

1895-1975

Biography

Vincent Glinsky was born in Russia in 1895 and immigrated to America as a young man. There he underwent formal training at the famed Beaux Art Institute in New York, the premiere artistic educational institution of its time. After receiving a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, Glinsky left America to settle in Italy, and following that, in France, where he was accorded a one-man show. Returning to America during the height of the Great Depression, Glinsky found work as a WPA artist, and also as an architectural artist. As his reputation grew, so did his following, and throughout his distinguished career Glinsky was sought out as a master teacher. He eventually served on the faculties of Columbia University, New York University, and Brooklyn College. While his works are represented in the nations finest museums, a number of them are still available to the private collector.

Trained in the high classical practice, Glinsky's work is of a technical level that approaches extinction today. His work is not concerned with passing fashions, but rather with the time honored traditions of sculpting. In an artistic climate where today's fashions are tomorrow's forgottens, Glinsky's direct-carved work has an enduring solidity and value. He worked in various media (stone, wood, terra cotta, watercolor, lithograph) and in several styles (Beaux Arts Neo-classical, WPA, abstracted).

Glinsky's sensitivity and craft found their natural expression in figurative work, for which he was best known. His human forms exude a warmth and animation that belie their construction in stone, wood, and bronze, and his adept works in clay and plaster reveal a spontaneity which only the sure hand of a master can create.

In speaking of his working methods, Enid Bell, in an article on Glinsky in American Artist wrote: "Glinsky's figurative sculpture accords with his own synthesis of the body, long evolved from observation studies, rather than with the actuality of a posed model. His procedure is to establish the configuration in a three-dimensional model small enough to permit spontaneous manipulation. This is the basis of the larger sculpture, but it is never exactly copied, for modifications or even considerable changes are naturally impelled by the increased dimensions, the difference in material, and an ever alert evaluation."