In Bronze & Marble

Sculpture can be--and lately has been --made from wire, welding rod, boiler plate, concrete, and wormy wood. Last week a pair of shows in Rome and Manhattan served to prove that bronze and marble also have possibilities.

In Rome's Palazzo Barberini, whimsical, Sicilian-born Emilio Greco, 44, winner of the top Italian sculpture award at the last Venice Biennale, showed 42 sculptures covering 20 years' work. To Sculptor Greco's delight, it was his newest work, three monumental bronze Grand Bathers, that had the critics (including famed Italian Sculptor Giacomo Manzu) singing his praises.

Gallerygoers who approach sculpture with high seriousness were put off at first by Greco's 7-ft., posturing Bathers, nude except for a Bikini with tight, binding bra. But Greco expects spectators to chuckle at the unexpected solemnity of their plump, vapid faces--while admiring their slender-legged charms. Says he, "They are comic figures, part of our society. They have participated in life; their participation is my theme."

At Manhattan's Knoedler Galleries are 29 sculptures with a vastly different intent. Paris Sculptor Etienne Hajdu, 50, born in Rumania of Hungarian parents, first approached his work under the inspiration of Abstractionists Fernand Leger and Brancusi. A wartime stint as a laborer in a Pyrenees marble quarry and an abrupt shift back to the position that "man is wonderful" gave him a new material and new goal.

The result is a series of thin marble cutouts, rubbed pebble-smooth, that sometimes suggest chic mannequin sil houettes, and sometimes ancient Gaulish coins. Hajdu also produces metal bas-reliefs, which he calls "orchestrations of light and shade," that bring to mind the pulsations of a Spanish dance or the interlocking vapor trails of high-flying jets. At best they reflect the inspiration he found in the art of ancient Mesopotamia, to create a world "real in facts but invented in forms."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.