Not too many sculptors concentrate on the figure today. Of those who do, only a few make it recognizable, and fewer still beautiful.
Oronzio Maldarelli, who died last January, took for his favorite theme the female nude, for he believed it to be nature brought to near perfection. "The only true mission of sculpture is the beauty of shape and form. It was good 10,000 years ago and it is good today," he said. How much beauty Maldarelli captured could be seen last week in a retrospective of his work at Manhattan's Paul Rosenberg Gallery.
At the time of his death, Maldarelli was...