Description
Born to Greek immigrant parents, Dimitri Hadzi found his cultural inheritance a source of artistic inspiration. After graduating from Cooper Union in 1950, Hadzi was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study in Athens. There, he realized that Classic sculptures involved astonishing invention and a profound understanding of the relationship between sculpture and architecture. Hadzis interest in Greek antiquity echoes in the title of Cycladic Sentinel and reverberates in its silhouette. Cycladic figurines were marble statues produced by the ancient Helladic civilization in the 4th and 3rd millennium BCE. In this work the geometric anthropomorphism of the ancient statuettes is freely reinterpreted and further abstracted. The oval shape of the face is rendered as a solar disc and the originally wedge-like nose is moved to the top of the statue and enlarged into an almost equilateral triangle. This variant of Cycladic Sentinel was commissioned by the late Michael Dertouzos, a close friend and strong admirer of Dimitri Hadzi, and Director of MITs Laboratory for Computer Science, from 1974-2001.
Details
- Work Date:
- 2000
- Location:
- Room No. 1
- Dimensions:
- 84 in. x 19 in. x 12 in. (213.36 cm x 48.26 cm x 30.48 cm)
- Medium:
- Bronze
- Credit Line:
- Gift of Catherine Liddell in Memory of Her Husband Michael L. Dertouzos