Stephanie Scuris

Stephanie Scuris
Born	Stephanie Scuris (1931-01-01)January 1, 1931 Lacedaemonos, Greece
Nationality	American
Education	Yale University, BFA, MFA
Known for	Sculpture
Notable work	Harmony Fountain, Singapore [1]
Movement	Bauhaus, Modernist, Constructivist, Geometric abstraction

Stephanie Scuris (born 1931) is a Greek-American artist and arts educator known for her large-scale Constructivist sculptures. She taught at the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. ^[2]

Early life

Scuris was born in Lacedaemonos, Greece,. ^[3] She moved to the United States in 1947 at age 16, two years after the end of World War II. ^[4] She studied under Josef Albers at Yale University, receiving a BFA and a MFA from the School of Art and Architecture in the late 1950s. ^[5]

Career

Scuris was one of the select group of students Albers introduced to Madeleine and Arthur Lejwa at the Galerie Chalette. ^[6] While still a student at Yale, she exhibited at their Structured Sculptures show of winter 1960. ^[7] She exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art, MOMA, The Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Yale Art School, and worked on major commissions for the Bankers Trust Company ^[8] and the Salk Laboratories in the 1960s. ^[9]

In 1962 she was part of a major exhibition at Mt. Holyoke College, in conjunction with the school's 125th anniversary, celebrating the "coming of age" on women's art, in America, as a creative force. ^[10] Other exhibitors included Lee Bontecou, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O-Keefe, and numerous others.

She was recruited, along with Norman Carlberg, by the educator and artist Eugene Leake (both alumni of the Yale/Albers MFA program), to revive the sculpture program at the Rinehart School at the Maryland Institute of Art. That revival was, by Scuris's account, "all about Bauhaus,” ^[11] an educational approach that centered on knowledge of the physical manipulation of materials rather than strict figurative representation.

Later years

Scuris spent her latter years in a combined studio-apartment in renovated warehouse in the historic neighborhood of Fells Point, in Baltimore Maryland, in the company of her brother, Theodore Scuris, also an artist. When asked by a local interviewer why she had never married, she answered, ‘I had my art, I couldn’t do both.’ ^[6]

Selected exhibitions ^[12]

• New Haven Art Festival, 1958-59
• Art: USA, traveling exhibition, in 1958 through 1960 ^[6]
• Recent Sculpture USA, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1959
• Structured Sculpture, Galerie Chalette, New York, 1961 & 1968
• Geometric Abstraction in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1962
• Women Artists in America Today, Mt. Holyoke College, MA, 1962
• White on White, DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA, 1965
• Inside Outside, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, 1966
• Josef Albers: His Art & Influence, Montclair Art Museum, NJ, 1981

Awards, permanent collections

• Winterwitz Award
• Yale University, prize for outstanding work & alumni award
• Peabody Award, 1961–62;
• Rinehart fellowship, 1961-64. ^[13]
• Skedion Ecton, (1964) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York ^[14]

References

1. Scuris, Stephanie (7 Jun 2018). "Harmony Fountain". SG Magazine.
2. "Stephanie Scuris: works on exhibit". The Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, Maryland: 26. 8 Dec 1971.
3. "Biography of Stephanie Scuris". Art Price.
4. Diuguid, Lew (9 Jun 2012). "A Sculptor and Her Art -- After All These Years" (PDF). Baltimore, Maryland: The Fells Pointer.
5. "Art on Display: a selection of works by Stephanie Scuris". Baltimore, Maryland: The Evening Sun. 11 Nov 1966. p. 18.
6. Zachariadi, Eirini (2023-08-19). "Stephanie Scuris: A Life Through Art". The National Herald. Retrieved 2025-03-15.
7. Structured Sculpture: Norman Carlberg, Kent Bloomer, William Reimann, Erwin Hauer, Stephenie Scuris, Robert Engman, Deborah de Maulpied. New York: Galerie Chalette. 1960. OCLC   6027697.
8. "Screens Set off Offices In Bank: Bronze Sculptures to Solve Floor-Plan Problem". The New York Times . New York. April 29, 1962.
9. "Art on Display: a selection of works by Stephanie Scuris". Baltimore, Maryland: The Evening Sun. 11 Nov 1966. p. 18.
10. "Sunday special: Women Artists to Exhibit Work. April Show to be Part of Mt. Holyoke's 125th-year Fete". NYT. March 4, 1962. p. 62.
11. Giuliano, Mike. "The View From Monkton: Eugene Leake's Dramatic Late Work." City Paper [Baltimore] 26 Jan. 1994. Print.
12. "Stephanie Scuris Biography". Francis Frost Fine Art Gallery.
13. "Biography of Stephanie Scuris". Art Price.
14. Scuris, Stephanie. "Skedion Ekton". New York: Whitney Museum of Art.