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Take the figure of a horse. At first glance it may seem to be a static representation; however, upon further exploration one discovers how the light that envelopes it creates something new and fluid, the way notes on a page in a symphony flow together once the orchestra turns the abstraction into sound. DeWitt´s sculptures take on a unique form when he works towards making monuments. This uniqueness holds whether the monument is as small as an Egyptian scarab or as large as the pyramid itself. Here mind fuses with the natural world. Something new and magical emerges out of clouds in the sky, foam along the seashore, multitudes of animals, and “ordinary” human beings.
To inspire the viewer is the primary goal of his work. This may sound very “serious,” but his work is especially joyful and rich with humor. In the most inclusive sense of the word, he celebrates life; not simply the creative process alone, “… for one who is merely creative is merely a creative fool”, attributed to none other than Pablo Picasso. Though the above may suggest that all of his work is sunny in tone, he looks at the world and also embraces the darker more macabre shades of life. Examples of these can be found in his sculptures of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Mustang, the Flight of Fantasy, the Agony, and the Crucifixion. His imagination extends into painting, where he creates something like a Book of Nightmares. Taken all together, his art constitutes a metaphor of life.
So the untrained eye can learn to see the world through DeWitt´s eyes. He synthesizes sculptural, geometric form, visual engineering, light, shadow, motion and tension, rhythm, and lyricism. The result is something powerful, energetic, awe-inspiring. DeWitt always attempts to compete with himself in a constant quest for excellence. Professor V.P.S. Esser at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, called his work examples of “strong, refined form”.
— edited by professor Jack Kligerman
this is yellowstone: floyd dewitt 1988
Hans Redeker
The author of numerous publications on the subjects of the Fine Arts, Architecture and Philosophy His most important books include Existentialism (1949) and The Crisis of the Artist (1950).
He is the former art editor of a leading Dutch newspaper
Among the present generation, Floyd DeWitt is a typical example of the young American artist temporarily leaving the country of his birth to seek artistic and spiritual nourishment at the font of western art – the ancient continent of Europe.
He is among a group of young expatriates who have sought to digest the whole of the European art tradition from Classicism to Expressionism.
That DeWitt has accomplished this feat is evident in the motifs of biblical and classical mythology that tie in with his lifelong passion for horses, or rather the relation between horses and men. Notably DeWitt’s strong character, shaped by his Montana childhood, has enabled him during his stay in Europe to gather a wealth of experience both as an artist and as in individual without ever having to deny his American background.
DeWitt is too dynamic an artist – both as a draughtsman and as a modeler – to be categorized simply as a classicist sculptor. The expressiveness of his surface textures and the rhythmic tensions of his compositions exploit the full three-dimensionality of light and space. Within a great tradition DeWitt stands out as an innovator in that he endows all his works, including the portraits, with an inner significance that transcends by far the individuality of the subject, even without the obvious symbolism that is embodied in a Pegasus.
Floyd DeWitt is among the most inspired, the most authentic and the most singular of the artists it has been my privilege to meet in the course of my career as an art critic. Singular, but without the slightest trace of trendiness or fashionable modernism, he is unshakably himself. He is one of those who represent the hope of a new generation that has liberated itself from the compulsive commercialism that contaminates so much of contemporary art today.
Whether in the intimacy of a portrait or in the monumentality of his larger bronzes, the art of Floyd DeWitt invariably employs only the purest means of sculptural expression.