Milton Horn (American 1906-1995) Monumental Bronze Sculpture. Burning Bush (1969-70). Limited edition, the 2nd of only 7 castings. Signed in the bronze. Height: 94cm. Width: 48cm. Depth: 35cm. Weight somewhere between 150-200 Lbs (our scales couldn’t cope!) (The champagne bottle giving a relative measure of the sculpture size in the first image is a standard-sized bottle - and is not included!).

By a renowned Chicago sculptor, with several public works in the city (see biography below), this is an awesome piece. It would need a pedestal to bring the top close to eye level for it to be viewed at its best but what a statement it could be! Not hard at all to imagine it on a white pedestal in a really big, bright, warehouse-style apartment, or maybe on marble in a prestigious office or perhaps a hotel reception or atrium. There’s a massive amount of presence in this sculpture, it really grabs attention.

Another casting of this sculpture is referred to in the National Museum of American History records of all Smithsonian collections. Index of American Sculpture, University of Delaware, 1985. Summarized as: “A male figure is enveloped in flames with only his head visible; flames are arching overhead.”

LITERATURE: "Milton Horn, Sculptor" Exhibition 16 March - 30 July 1989. Spertus Museum of Judaica. Pg 61 for a photograph of another example of this bronze (See last 2 images above). This book will be included with the bronze.

MARKS (see image):
Signed Milton Horn, dated 1969-70 and numbered 2/7.

CONDITION:
Very good - has clearly been displayed indoors only. A few tiny scuffs, a little dust in crevices, a tiny spot of white paint here and there. Everything commensurate with being 50 years old and having been well looked after.

SHIPPING:
Our price includes packing and shipping by air to the United States. We will use a specialist packing and shipping firm to pack, crate, and ship this. Please note that this may take several days and that any import costs or sales taxes are the responsibility of the buyer.

PROVENANCE:
Niall Hobhouse, art collector, and patron of architecture. Past Governor of the London School of Economics (Chair of the Advisory Board, Cities Programme), and Trustee of both the Sir John Soane’s Museum and of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal. He collected drawings by architects and curated exhibitions and wrote about buildings, landscaping, and museums, establishing the Drawing Matter Trust to explore the role of drawing in architecture, architectural education, and exhibition.

BIOGRAPHY:
Milton Horn (b. Kiev, Russia (now Kyiv, Ukraine), September 1, 1906; d. March 29, 1995)

Milton Horn’s parents emigrated to the United States of America in 1913, with Horn becoming an American citizen in 1917. He began drawing and painting the following year and studied at New York’s Beaux-Arts Institute of Design from 1923 - 1927. He was awarded a Fellowship of the Tiffany Foundation in 1925, in recognition of his study of their Chinese and Japanese paintings and prints collection, a strong influence on his own drawing style.

Milton Horn’s interest soon turned to three-dimensional expression, and from 1921 to 1923, he studied with sculptor Henry Hudson Kitson, as well as undertaking studies at the Copley Society, Boston.

Horn quickly became highly celebrated, receiving commissions, honours and awards widely across America from 1927 up until 1993, just two years prior to his death. His works were documented by Estelle Oxenhorn, his wife from 1928, herself an accomplished photographer.

In 1936, Milton Horn became a founding member of the Sculptor's Guild and between 1939–49 he served as Carnegie Professor of Art, and Artist-in-Residence at Olivet College, Olivet, Michigan.

He moved to Chicago in 1949, where he was largely based for the remainder of his time.

Among notable works hereon in, Horn sculpted the Torah ark doors for Chicago's South Shore Temple between 1953–54, with wooden paneled life-sized depictions of two cherubim. He also completed the three bronzes "The Teacher, the Mother, the Father" for Chicago’s PTA headquarters.

Between 1953–55 Milton Horn worked on his first commission of more than a dozen from the City of Chicago, "Chicago Rising from the Lake" for the Department of Public Works. Installed high on the facade of a parking garage, the piece is now located at ground level at the Southwest corner beneath the Columbus Drive Bridge along the Chicago River Walk. A number of further public works followed, including the largest of his pieces, the "Hymn to Water" (1963–65) for the Central Water Filtration Plant of the City of Chicago, with Horn using poetic symbols to celebrate water as the sustaining force of life.

Milton Horn was awarded Citation of Honor in 1957 by the American Institute of Architects Centennial Conference, Washington, DC, and in 1972 he was honored by the National Sculpture Society.

The Olivet College, Michigan awarded Milton Horn an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts in 1976, when he was also elected Academician by the National Academy of Design. Horn went on to create the Milton Horn Fine Art Trust and the Milton and Estelle Horn Fine Art Study Collection at WVU.

Horn moved briefly to Hampstead in London, England in 1988, but moved back to Chicago in 1992, where he succumbed to illness, leaving his last piece, a large plant form he called “Rhubarb”, incomplete.

Since 2005, Milton Horn’s work "Composition" (1944) has been included in the permanent display of American Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, alongside over eighteen works in bronze, wood, stone and terracotta being placed at various institutions, museums and public sites by the Milton Horn Fine Art Trust.

The spirit of Milton Horn’s works is perhaps best expressed in his own words:-
“The function of sculpture is not to decorate but to integrate, not to entertain but to orient man … sculpture by its very nature is an abstraction. Like architecture, it is an organic abstraction in concrete form. When sculpture is wed to the architectural structure or wed to nature's forms and the topography of the site - sculpture wed to any or all of these performs the function of integrating man spiritually to his universe.” (quoted in Fred, Haydon, Ellis, Milton Horn, Sculptor, Spertus Museum of Judaica, Chicago 1989).