Unlike Lloyd Goodrich, most of us did not know Hugo Robus personally, and are therefore less open to the emotional blackmail that one imagines to have resulted in the catalog essay which accompanies the present Memorial Exhibition at the Forum Gallery. Hugo Robus died in 1964 at the age of 79. The selection of 25 of his works makes it amply clear that Robus’s sculptural contribution was non-existent––that if ever a pasticheur got by on the merits and fame of a single piece (the 1939 Girl Washing Her Hair, in the sculpture collection of the Museum of Modern Art), it was Robus. To say, as Lloyd Goodrich does, that Robus was “one of the pioneers of modern forms of expression in our country––first as a painter, then after 1920 as one of our most gifted sculptors” is merely false.
Among the early pieces shown is Modelling Hands, of 1922. The piece is a stylized intermeshing of Futuristic fingers––Futurism in 1922 is hardly “pioneering”––all wrapped together in the act of creating a female statuette. The imagery is Rodin’s and the stylishness is Cubistico-Futuristico, a variety recalling Archipenko and Mestrovic, but without the sculptural sensitivity of even these already disputed figures. After forty years Modelling Hands is partially affecting, but for quite other reasons than sculptural ones. Period charm is one; it would disappear beside a Boccioni, which it partially imitates.
Among these early works there is also a bronze equestrian, The General, of 1922, a respectable piece, although an arty pilfering of Duchamp-Villon and Lipchitz. The rest might easily fill a course in home economics for retarded girls.
—Robert Pincus-Witten
