Gifts from the Manuel Neri Trust

September 14, 2017 - February 12, 2018
Manuel Neri, Joan Brown Seated, 1959, cast 1963, re-patina applied 2016, 30 ¼ x 12 ½ x 27 in. Anderson Collection at Stanford University, Gift of the Manuel Neri Trust, 2017.2.01

 

The exploration of the human figure has been the pursuit of artists for millennia. Manuel Neri (b. 1930), a California native and former student of Richard Diebenkorn and Nathan Oliveira, has spent a lifetime accentuating the gesture, surface, and materiality of the figure. He renders his work in several different mediums that include plaster, marble, bronze, and paper. This exhibition, drawn from and celebrating gifts donated to the museum by The Manuel Neri Trust, provides a glimpse into the artist’s creative process and his quest to define the figure on his own terms.

This exhibition is organized by the Anderson Collection at Stanford University in celebration of a gift from The Manuel Neri Trust. Additional works on loan come from the Collection of Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson, The Manuel Neri Trust, and Hackett Mill, San Francisco. The Anderson Collection gratefully acknowledges support for this exhibition from Museum Members and for the publication from The Manuel Neri Trust.”

The outdoor sculptures of Manuel Neri


Manuel Neri  is known for his prolonged artistic engagement with the figure in a variety of materials, starting with plaster in the late 1950s and moving into bronze and marble. The seven sculptures in the outdoor installation reference Neri’s origins with plaster and his expressionistic manipulation of the medium. By casting plaster in bronze, tactile surfaces are preserved and enhanced. Presented courtesy of Hackett Mill, San Francisco.

The Catalog

Manuel Neri and the Assertion of Modern Figurative Sculpture
Published by Anderson Collection at Stanford University and Stanford University Press

2018 BRONZE MEDALIST – Fine Art Book Category
Independent Publisher Book Awards

Representing the breadth of the artist’s oeuvre, this book offers insights into the development of Manuel Neri’s sculpture and a fresh perspective on his contributions to contemporary art. With approximately 400 color images, it captures Neri’s engagement with modernism, tradition, and humanity’s struggle to understand itself. Writings include a foreword by Jason Linetzky, Director of the Anderson Collection, an introduction by Alexander Nemerov, the department chair and Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities, Stanford’s Department of Art & Art History, and essays by noted scholar Bruce Nixon which all illustrate Neri’s lifelong involvement with the most creative traditions to capture the modern age—in all its contradictions, vulnerabilities, and possibilities—in the enduring mirror of the human body.

Available for purchase at the museum: $50 non-members, $40 members.

To order online click here.