Bill King

1925–2015

Bill King (1925–2015) — also published as William King — was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and studied at Cooper Union in New York, where his contemporaries included Alex Katz and Lois Dodd, before a Fulbright fellowship took him to Italy in the early 1950s. Known as “the gentle giant of postwar American sculpture,” King worked across metal, wood, ceramic, and aluminum, moving from early figurative pieces influenced by jazz culture — such as Sonny Greer and Jimmy Archie (1953) — toward simplified, monumentally scaled figures marked by wit and economy of line. He served as president of the National Academy of Design and was a longtime fixture of the Hamptons art community together with his wife, painter Connie Fox. His sculptures were acquired early by the Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. King died in Springs, New York, in 2015.

Links: https://artcritical.com/2015/03/05/the-gentle-giant-william-king-1925-2015/

Sources: David Cohen. "The Gentle Giant: William King, 1925–2015." artcritical, March 5, 2015. https://artcritical.com/2015/03/05/the-gentle-giant-william-king-1925-2015/.

Brooklyn Rail. "William King." February 2014. https://brooklynrail.org/2014/02/artseen/william-king/.