Altina

Born in New York City in 1907, Altina studied art in Europe and in the United States with George Grosz and Rico Le Brun, among others. Her early work was in industrial design. She assisted Salvador Dalí in dressing windows on New York's Fifth Avenue in the 1940s and designed eyewear for Harlequin, for which she received a National Design Award. Upon moving to California, she created Interregnum, a film based on drawings by George Grosz; it won the first prize at the Venice Biennale film festival and received an Academy Award nomination in 1961. During this period she also received several mural commissions, including one for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. In the late 1960s Altina began making fantasy furniture called "Chairacters"--sculpted figurative works that function as benches and chairs. She drew inspiration for these pieces from Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographs of empty chairs, which seemed to evoke their departed sitters. Her first solo exhibition, at the McKenzie Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1967, featured her chairs. The artist also developed a series of "portrait chairs" with faces cast from life masks of her sitters. She continued to make fantasy furniture after moving to Washington, D.C., in 1974. Produced in multiples, mainly in fiberglass, her pieces are often finished to simulate other materials such as terra-cotta or stone. They recall the more intimate aspects of certain periods of ancient Greek and Roman art. Altina died in 1999 in Sante Fe, New Mexico.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.