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Berthold Nebel

Swiss, 1889 - 1964

BiographyBerthold Nebel arrived in the USA with his parents when he was still young. After learning to model clay in a firm in New Jersey he studied under James Earle Frazer at the Mechanics Institute of the Art Students League. Having been awarded the Prix de Rome, he was a guest at the American Academy in Rome between 1914 and 1917. It was there that he met Rodin, whose work was to have a lasting influence on him. In 1917 he was mobilised in situ as an interpreter for the American Red Cross. He married an Italian in 1918, returned to the States in 1920 and was appointed Director of the sculpture school of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh. In 1923 he returned to New York where he continued to study. He exhibited at the National Academy of Design, the National Sculpture Society at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Art Museum, Pittsburgh and the Baltimore Museum of Art amongst others.

In Rome he carried out the sculptural group Fighters in which Rodin's influence is evident. It was shown at the art exhibition in Rome. During his three-years' stay at Pittsburgh (1920-1923) he executed two medals: Rescue at the Mine and First Aid and a statue of the former president Theodore Roosevelt at the City Council Building, a statue of M. Hamerschog, chairman of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh. On his return to New York in 1923 he carried out architectural decorations for the dome and niches of the Cunard Building and statues of famous figures. From 1928 to 1938 he was commissioned to sculpt the bronze doors for the Museum of the American Indians and for the Museum of the Geographic Society. The doors, set up in 1933, show his indebtedness to the Italian Renaissance, especially the bronze doors for the Florentine Baptistery by Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti. During the same period Nebel spent ten years on 9 low reliefs representing the Spanish civilisations which were erected on the façade of the building of the Hispanic Society of America in 1939. Around the same year he produced the Nereid group, an example of his female nudes. In 1945 in commemoration of the end of the war, he created the medal World Unity or Oblivion showing an American soldier helping another wounded soldier, in 1957 the commemorative medal of the Mayflower and in 1960 the commemorative medal of the 50th anniversary of the Medalic Art Company. He devised a contraption to replace the tricky work requiring a compass to 'focus' definitive sculptures based on the preliminary sketch.

Numerous other works stand out as landmarks in Berthold Nebel's career. The Post-Romanticism of the Fighters of his early work is echoed in the equestrian group of the couple Adventure or his statues of generals. He was at his best as a sculptor of ambitious monumental ensembles.

"NEBEL, Berthold." In Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/benezit/B00129165 (accessed April 27, 2012).

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