HAROLD AMBELLAN (1912 - 2006) was born in Buffalo, New York. From 1935-1939, as one of the many American artists who benefited from Roosevelt's Federal Art Project, Ambellan created a series of mural sculptures entitled Family and Learning, for the Willert Park Courts (a public housing project in Buffalo), as well as a sculpture for Brooklyn College in New York. He was also one of the artists featured in the 1938 group show, Subway Art, at the Museum of Modern Art. Ambellan was elected President of the Sculptors Guild of America in 1941, the same year that his work was exhibited in group shows at both the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

Due to his broad humanist approach to art – and his belief that art was tied to every man (or everyman) – he became a victim of the tide of McCarthyism sweeping the country, which culminated in his decision to exile to France in 1954. Calling himself an artisan, Ambellan worked every day, often drawing on the scraps of paper and correspondence that happened to be scattered on the table in his studio. He pointed to sources as varied as German expressionism and cubism to Greek, Indian, and African art as the primary guideposts for, and inspirational sources of, his art.

As an artist of the common man, Ambellan reveled in the fact that his oeuvre is as present in homes and apartments throughout Europe as it is in the galleries of that region. From his most grandiose sculptures to his smallest studies on paper, Ambellan devoted his life to the study of the human form: its lines and curves; its movements; its singular, as well as coupled, sensuality. The beauty of his work touches the viewer on a visceral level and its purity speaks directly to the spirit.

(Source: Burchfield Penny Art Center; Image Credit: WNY History)