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Arthur Lee
Born:
Trondheim, Norway
1881
Died:
Newtown, Connecticut
1961
Active in:
- New York, New York
Biography
Arthur Lee was born in the seaport city of Trondhjem, Norway, in 1881. While still a child, he immigrated with his parents to the United States. At the age of twenty-one, he began studying sculpture under Kenyon Cox at the Art Students League in New York City and then attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris for five years. Several nude figures that he exhibited at the Armory Show in 1913 brought him recognition, and he was awarded a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915 for his Ethiopian, a nude male figure. Sometimes referred to by his contemporaries as the "American Maillol," Lee was preoccupied throughout his career with the harmony of form and rhythms of the idealized nude figure. He was an instructor at the Art Students League until he opened his own drawing school in 1931. He remained committed to his strict adherence to classicism until his death in Newtown, Connecticut, in 1961.
National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996)Works in the collection by
Arthur Lee
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