Alan LeQuire

Last updated
Alan LeQuire
Born1955
Alma mater Vanderbilt University
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
OccupationSculptor
ParentVirgil LeQuire

Alan LeQuire (born 1955) is an American sculptor from Nashville, Tennessee. Many of his sculptures are installed in the city.

Contents

Early life

Alan LeQuire was born in 1955. His father, Virgil, was a physician and researcher on the faculty of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. His mother, Louise, was a painter, art teacher, and writer. The young LeQuire showed an early interest in sculpture. While an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, he studied independently under professor of sculpture Puryear Mims and Middle Tennessee State University sculptor Jim Gibson. He spent his senior year in France, studied art history, and earned a degree in English. After a year in Rome learning bronze casting as an assistant to New York City artist Milton Hebald, LeQuire entered the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree.

Career

LeQuire specializes in work of great scale, usually large public commissions. His most famous work is the replica of Phidias' Athena Parthenos that stands in the naos of the full-scale reconstruction of the Acropolis Parthenon in Nashville's Centennial Park. This statue, cast in a composite of gypsum and fiberglass on a steel and aluminum armature, is currently the largest piece of indoor sculpture in the Western World, standing almost 42 feet (13 m) tall. LeQuire received the commission for the work in 1982, and it was unveiled in 1990 in a stark, white finish. In 2002, LeQuire oversaw a polychroming and gilding process that brought the statue to an appearance close to what ancient Greek visitors may have seen at the original Parthenon.[ citation needed ]

In 1997 LeQuire created a sculptural group of life-size portraits of Tennessee women's suffrage activists Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Anne Dallas Dudley, and Lizzie Crozier French. The sculpture is on display in Market Square in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee and is known as the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial. [1] LeQuire also created a large bronze relief for the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville dedicated to the Women's Rights Movement and commemorating passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920—Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, thus making it part of the U.S. Constitution.

Another large-scale work is Musica , a bronze statue grouping unveiled in 2003 that sits in a grassy knoll at the center of Buddy Killen Circle, a roundabout where Division Street meets 17th Avenue South in the Music Row area of Nashville. Musica is over 40 feet (12 m) tall, and consists of nine colossal nude figures, male and female, dancing in a circle. It is the largest bronze figure group in the United States.

LeQuire is also a portrait sculptor.

Other works by LeQuire include:

LeQuire was a Tennessee Arts Commission Fellow in 1986, and received a Tennessee Governor's Citation in 1987. In 1990 he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Design Award for Athena Parthenos.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parthenon</span> Temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece

The Parthenon is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena during the fifth century BC. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of classical Greek art, an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, democracy and Western civilization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phidias</span> Greek sculptor, painter and architect (c.480–430 BC)

Phidias or Pheidias was an Ancient Greek sculptor, painter, and architect, active in the 5th century BC. His Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Phidias also designed the statues of the goddess Athena on the Athenian Acropolis, namely the Athena Parthenos inside the Parthenon, and the Athena Promachos, a colossal bronze which stood between it and the Propylaea, a monumental gateway that served as the entrance to the Acropolis in Athens. Phidias was the son of Charmides of Athens. The ancients believed that his masters were Hegias and Ageladas.

<i>Athena Parthenos</i> Sculpture of the Greek goddess Athena

The statue of Athena Parthenos was a monumental chryselephantine sculpture of the goddess Athena. Attributed to Phidias and dated to the mid-fifth century BCE, it was an offering from the city of Athens to Athena, its tutelary deity. The naos of the Parthenon on the acropolis of Athens was designed exclusively to accommodate it.

Musica is a bronze statue that sits upon a grassy knoll at the center of a traffic rotary where the confluence of Division Street and 16th Avenue North happens, known as the Music Row Roundabout or Buddy Killen Circle.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Athena Promachos</span> Bronze statue of Athena

The Athena Promachos was a colossal bronze statue of Athena sculpted by Pheidias, which stood between the Propylaea and the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens. Athena was the tutelary deity of Athens and the goddess of wisdom and warriors. Pheidias also sculpted two other figures of Athena on the Acropolis, the huge gold and ivory ("chryselephantine") cult image of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon and the Lemnian Athena.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abby Crawford Milton</span> American suffragist and supercentenarian (1881–1991)

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<i>Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial</i> Bronze sculpture in Knoxville, Tennessee

The Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial is located at Market Square in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. It honors the women who campaigned for the state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to give women the right to vote. Tennessee was the final state to ratify the amendment and have it added to the Constitution, and thus was the focus of considerable effort both from local women and women who travelled from other states to assist them. The ratification vote was passed on August 18, 1920.

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A bronze statue of the Confederate soldier Sam Davis was installed in 1999 at Nashville, Tennessee's Montgomery Bell Academy, in the United States. The sculpture was designed by the local artist Alan LeQuire. Davis had been an student at the Western Military Institute, a predecessor of the Montgomery Bell Academy.

<i>Womens Rights Pioneers Monument</i> Sculpture by Meredith Bergmann in Central Park, Manhattan, New York, U.S.

The Women's Rights Pioneers Monument is a sculpture by Meredith Bergmann. It was installed in Central Park, Manhattan, New York City, on August 26, 2020. The sculpture is located at the northwest corner of Literary Walk along The Mall, the widest pedestrian path in Central Park. The sculpture commemorates and depicts Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), pioneers in the suffrage movement who advocated women's right to vote and who were pioneers of the larger movement for women's rights.

References

  1. "Tennessee Woman's Suffrage Memorial". East Tennessee Foundation. Archived from the original on July 7, 2007. Retrieved 2013-01-20.
  2. "Women's Suffrage Monument Unveiled - Story". Newschannel5.com. 26 August 2016. Retrieved 2016-08-27.
  3. "Nashville's Newest Monument Celebrates State's Role In Women's Winning The Right To Vote". Nashville Public Radio. 25 August 2016. Retrieved 2016-08-27.