John Storrs

http://www.askart.com/biography.asp?ID=29674

Born and raised in Chicago, John Storrs was a pioneer modernist sculptor known for his precisely executed, solid, non-objective, machine-like forms. He spent most of his adult life in France, living much of the time in Orleans, having first traveled to Europe in 1907-1908.

He returned to Chicago and studied with sculptor Lorado Taft at the Art Institute of Chicago and then with Charles Grafly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1912, he returned to France and became a student of Auguste Rodin until Rodin's death in 1917. During this period, Storrs had used a realist style in his sculpture, but by 1920, he was pursuing Cubism and Futurism and then turned to vertical, totally non-objective pieces that resembled architectural structures.

In 1930, he designed "Ceres" the 33-foot high aluminum statue atop the Board of Trade Building in Chicago.

During World War II, he was imprisoned for one year by Nazis. (Source: Archives of Askart.com) Credit: Matthew Baigell, Dictionary of American Art and Peter Falk, Who Was Who in American Art.