Like many of his contemporaries, sculptor Albert Wein (1915-1991) had a keen interest in the human figure and an awareness of and appreciation for modernist concepts, specifically abstraction. Having trained in the academic tradition as well as with forward-looking instructors such as Hans Hofmann, Wein produced sculptures—and some paintings—that are clear indications of his fascination with all art, past and present. Today, scholars are taking a closer look at artists such as Wein who, especially in their works from the 1930s and 1940s, sought to balance the legacies of the past with the excitement of the future.

This exhibition, which has been organized by the Boston Athenæum with the cooperation of the Albert Wein estate and in conjunction with Jim Levis Fine Art, Inc., New York, and Abby Taylor Fine Art LLC, Greenwich, Connecticut, will be the first major retrospective of Wein’s work. It is being held on the occasion of the publication of the first major monograph on the artist’s life and work, Albert Wein: An American Modernist (Greenwich: Abby Taylor Fine Art LLC, 2008).

The book includes an essay by David Dearinger, the Athenæum’s Susan Morse Hilles Curator of Paintings and Sculpture and curator of the exhibition, and copies may be ordered from the Athenæum or directly from the publisher.