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The Olympic Gateway
Robert Graham1984
The Olympic Museum
Lausanne, Switzerland
Two bronze torsos, male and female, are dressed on the Gateway. Inverted gold leafed cones serve as pedestals for the figures, whose bodies have developed musculature specific to their sports. The models were two athletes, a female sprinter, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and a male water polo player, Terry Shroeder, caught at the split second moment of repose before action – rythmos to Greeks. On each column, rising from square columns, line drawings of torsos in athletic movements are inlaid in zinc.
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Details
- Title: The Olympic Gateway
- Creator Lifespan: 19 August 1938 - 27 December 2008
- Creator Nationality: American
- Creator Gender: Male
- Creator Death Place: Santa Monica, California
- Creator Birth Place: Mexico City, Mexico
- Date Created: 1984
- Location Created: USA
- Sculptor: Robert Graham
- Physical Dimensions: w1670 x h2730 x d520 cm (Complete)
- Collection information: This sculpture is a reduced size copy of the Olympic Gateway monumental sculpture in front of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum commissioned from Robert Graham for the 1984 Olympic Games. Fifty maquettes for the Olympic Gateway were made in 1984 in bronze with a brown and gold patina. Three of them are at The Olympic Museum in Lausanne.
- Artistic school or movement: Robert Graham studied at San Jose State University and at the San Francisco Art Institute in California. During the mid-sixties, Graham made his figures from low-fire ceramic clay, but he soon turned to wax with a flesh tint. Robert Graham was the premier contemporary sculptor of figurative monuments in America. England played a significant part in his career. He lived in London from 1967 to 1971, and in 1970 showed at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, his inaugural public exhibition. Public installations of his sculptures are on view at numerous locations in Los Angeles, as well as in San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle. Graham used a range of materials and scales in his work and created hundreds of nude figures and groupings in intermediate scales. He had an enduring fascination with the female figure, and explored almost every conceivable position and attitude of the female nude in his personal work. During preparations for the 1984 Games, Olympic Arts Festival organisers selected Robert Graham to create the Olympic Gateway Statue as a permanent memorial to the Games of the XXIII Olympiad. He also designed the commemorative silver dollar for the event. In 1993, Robert Graham received the ACLU Freedom of Speech Award and the California Governors Award for his outstanding contribution to the arts. In 2005, Graham was the recipient of the Hope of Los Angeles Award, Latino Heritage Month, City of Los Angeles. He married actress Anjelica Houston in 1992, and the couple lived in Venice, California until his death in 2008.
- Type: Sculpture
- Rights: International Olympic Committee, 2004, ©IOC/G.Peter
- Medium: Bronze sculpture
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