Robert Sperry

Symbols of nature (such as owls and cacti) seem to attract Sperry. He has a fine sense of design which allows him to draw out the weight of a jar or vase by encrusting its surface, or to point up the curved form of a bottle or plate with sweeping and striped designs in glaze. Given a limited format he can turn out attractive pottery that stresses its own properties. However, the fine arts objects in this exhibit suffer under the size restriction. Sperry appears somewhat trapped by the wheel, but moreso by these symbols which turn many of his explorations into cute junk (a horrible owl-vase, for

print April 1963

“Viennese Expressionism, 1910–1924”

Egon Schiele’s drawings and paintings (ninety of them) dominate an excellent show that gives multiple insights into the brief moment of Viennese expressionism. Although the exhibit contains few oils, it manages to indicate what happened when art nouveau collided with expressionism in gilded, collapsing Vienna. At the same time it renders at least an outline of Schiele’s agonized image of man and demonstrates his impressive skill as draftsman and colorist.

Schiele did not bother with “composition” in the academic sense, but that does not prevent his drawings from having the finesse one normally