Mary Callery
American, (1903-1977)
Tara, 1956
gouache on paper
signed with initials and dated lower right.

Biography from the Archives of askART:
Mary Callery is known for her linear, open sculptures that are like drawings in metal. Her stick-figure acrobats and figures, poised in hair-edge equilibrium, or arranged in frieze-like bands, move in space and invite air to flow between their outlines.

Callery came from a wealthy background. Born in New York City and raised in Pittsburgh, she was the daughter of James Callery, president of the Diamond National Bank and chairman of the board of the Pittsburgh Railways Company. She became interested in sculpture at age twelve. After graduating from Miss Spence's School in New York in 1921, she studied sculpture for four years with Edward McCartan at the Art Students League in New York. She married in 1923, and subsequently had a daughter with Frederic Coudert, Jr. (later Congressman Coudert), from whom she was later divorced.

Between 1930 and 1940, Callery lived in Paris. After two years of study with the sculptor Jacques Loutchansky, working in an almost classical style something like Aristide Mallol's, she was swept up into the modern movement and became part of the devoted circle around Picasso. In her 1942 essay "The Last Time I Saw Picasso," she wrote: "The more one saw, the greater he became. I find myself even now repeating the things I became aware of through him."

Picasso teased her by asking if she had done a "seascape" and then, more seriously, urged her to work from imagination. "What do you need a model for? You know that the human body has a head . . . and two legs . . ."

She visited Picasso's flat in the Rue La Boetie with fellow artists and friends. ("You wondered how it was actually possible to get through all the mail strewn upon the floor"), where he pulled out painting after painting with a running commentary. She also visited his sculpture atelier at the small chateau at Bois-Geloup, north of Paris, where his works stood in the stable and about the grounds. Some of her other associates at this time were the purist painter Amedee Ozenfant, sculptor Henri Laurens, and critic Christian Zervos. Between 1934 and 1936, she was married to Carlo Frua de Angeli of Milan.

Callery returned to New York in 1940 to escape the ravages of World War II. In the forties she developed her distinctive, attenuated, interweaving figures in such works as Amity (1947) and The Curve (1947). She had shown in Paris, and after a solo show at the Curt Valentin Gallery, exhibited many times at the Knoedler's in the sixties.

Callery believed that color should be used on sculpture, an ancient tradition shared by the Egyptians and the Greeks, and she sometimes painted her works. During the 1940s, she collaborated with Fernand Leger in an innovative conjunction of sculpture and painting. "Against Leger's patterned backgrounds of primary colors, her figures weave their arabesques," wrote critic Philip Adams.

Callery executed several architectural commissions. The Fables of La Fontaine (1954), for Public School 34 on East 12th Street, New York City, is a frieze designed for school children to climb and crawl through, and uses forms reminiscent of industrial I-beams. In 1953, she designed three aluminum sculptures for the Aluminum Company of America's headquarters in Pittsburgh: Constellation I, Constellation II, and Three Birds in Flight, a twelve-foot aluminum abstraction suspended in the glass entrance space of the Alcoa Building. Acrobats, Monument (1955), was designed for Wingate Public School in Brooklyn.

Art critic Judith Kaye Reed described Callery and her work Amity, a procession of five figures with a calm, classical feeling, as "a modern who can pare substance down to slender, pencil-like forms without substituting sterile symbols for the fluid grace of living matter. . . ." Aline Louchheim in Art News called Amity "among the most successful of contemporary out-of-doors sculptures." Callery's work is in the collection of Nelson D. Rockefeller and the Museum of Modern Art.

Source:
"American Women Artists", by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein.

  • Dimensions: 16"H x 12 1/2" sheet
  • Medium: gouache on paper

Accepted Forms of Payment:

ACH, American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Money Order / Cashiers Check, Personal Check, Visa, Wire Transfer

Shipping

Shipping and removal are the sole responsibility of the buyer. Shipping is available by request through a third party shipping service, Shipping Saint. Please contact our office if you would like to arrange your own shipping. Buyers will not automatically receive a shipping invoice. You will be sent a separate invoice for shipping once your initial invoice is paid and your items are packed and ready to ship. Shipping is invoiced via Shipping Saint and cannot be combined with your auction invoice.
Shipping Saint can be contacted at [email protected] or via phone, 317-644-6088.
PICKUP: Pickup is by appointment only. Items are subject to storage fees if they are not removed from premises within 10 business days. If items require shipping, arrangements and removal must be completed within 15 business days.

by Ripley Auctions
June 24, 2026 3:00 PM EDT
5451 N Rural Street
Indianapolis, IN, US 46220

Ripley Auctions

You agree to pay a buyer's premium of 25% and any applicable taxes and shipping.

View full terms and conditions

Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $49 $5
$50 $99 $10
$100 $199 $20
$200 $499 $25
$500 $999 $50
$1,000 $2,999 $100
$3,000 $4,999 $200
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $29,999 $1,000
$30,000 + $2,500