Word: gresser
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...exhibit at the Eliot House Junior Common Room of the works of Sy Gresser and Charlotte Lichtblau provides its own dramatic but calming balance of contrasting views of humanity. It is an exhibition which searches man from opposite perceptions-Gresser is intensely psychological in his evocations of the individual struggle while Lichtblau pursues the group stirrings of city-man and country-man with sociological insight...
...Gresser-Lichtblau show is significant-not merely because it replaces the JCR's fond portrait of President Eliot and old photographs of championship House crews-but because the human image it presents the viewer is a tense but unified whole...
...Gresser's sculptures approach the human condition from the individual's viewpoint. They stand alone and often truncated in the room. Unlike Lichtblau's romantic vision of a social universe, his works appear to offer little hope for human salvation. One, "The Lovers," sitting inside the fire-place, presents two persons writhing on opposite sides of a wall, unable to touch one another. Gresser's sculptures cannot even give the consolation of a family group...
...Gresser chisels directly into wood and stone "the struggle and the supreme dignity of life." His work is pain-staking, the quiet evolution of the sculpture reveals a complex set of emotions. One piece, a woman entitled "Madonna Reborn," remained unfinished for a decade. "I stopped work on it and could not resume until I regained my feeling for the feminine form," says Gresser...
...figures evoke a probing sense of human loneliness. Even in the heavy granite in which Gresser often works, the sculptures are delicately crafted with a stern Gothic sensitivity for the grandeur of the solitary human form. Although his figures often appear blunt in their aloof individuality, the directness is modified by the lack of harsh edges. His surfaces are pleasing and receptive, especially the highly polished appearance of "Torso," whose edges are softened and very smooth. The softness is the redeeming quality in which we see a cautious hint of hope for human existence...