Angelo Granata
(American, 1922-2009)
Sophos, 1960
Carbon steel with protective paint
138 inches; base 22 ½ x 16 ½ inches
Purchased with funds from George S. Rosborough, Jr. ’40 and the Marie-Louise and Samuel R. Rosenthal Fund
Located: North side of Burling Library
Angelo Granata’s spindly construction Sophos stands west of the main entrance to Burling Library. This statue, thin and angular, rises over students and visitors. Made of rejected scraps, it suggests Granata’s desire and ability to recycle. The sculpture began with the main shaft of a rejected piece of steel from a previous sculpture. He chose the components from a pile of scrap metal at a nearby manufacturer, and began to fit them together, bending and welding them where appropriate. For Granata, the sculpture composed itself — he merely aided in its construction. Sophos depicts this sentiment: it shoots unattended from the ground, almost ungainly.
Granata chooses to explore nonrepresentational forms in his art. By using simple shapes — such as the overwhelmingly linear components of Sophos — he hopes to produce art that may be enjoyed by the viewer without explanation. Sophos fully demonstrates his interest in simplicity, but its title, an ancient Greek word meaning wisdom or skill, complicates the simple pleasure Granata intends to invoke. Sophos acts as a marker, noting Burling — and Grinnell College in general — as a communal place for study and knowledge. But as Granata attempts to show in his sculpture, wisdom may also be solitary, simple.
About the Artist
Angelo Granata received an M.F.A.from the University of Iowa in 1948. His works are in collections at Georgetown College in Kentucky, the Figge Art Museum, Iowa (formerly the Davenport Municipal Art Gallery) and the University of Alabama. Granata, professor of sculpture at the University ofAlabama from 1948 until his retirement in 1988, is now professor emeritus. He was a friend of Grinnell College Professor of Art Louis Zirkle, and it was through Zirkle’s aspiration for an outdoor sculpture collection that Sophos came to Grinnell.
By: Meredith Ibey ’00 and Christine Hancock ’06, updated 2006