Retrospective recalls Black sculptor John Rhoden’s artistic journey

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A touring exhibit of work by sculptor John W. Rhoden argues he is as underacknowledged as he was prolific.

“Determined to Be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden,” organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts, is now at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center. And the last days of summer are a great time to see for yourself.

Rhoden was born in 1916, in Birmingham, Ala. His work was widely exhibited around the U.S. starting in the ’50s. His best-known pieces are probably his public artworks, including “Mitochondria,” a massive 1972 bronze outside Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital, and a 1989 bronze of Frederick Douglass at Lincoln University, west of Philadelphia.

The range of styles across Rhoden’s 40-some works in the show alone is impressive. The Douglass statue (represented here by a photograph and a scale-model-sized maquette) is straight-up historical portraiture. Nearby, the 4-foot-tall teakwood sculpture “Population Explosion” looks like an abstract until you start to notice human anatomy — feet, the tops of heads. People accreting.

Elsewhere, the dynamically stylized but figurative “Aeneas” (1952) sits next to 1958’s semi-abstract “Laika,” a tribute to the famed Soviet space dog whose edged metal rods assembled in hard, jarring lines suggest a mechanized canine. Likewise paired are Rhoden’s compactly powerful, lightly stylized “Bull” (1995) and his fantastical, lushly ornamental “Three-Headed Lion” (1954).

“Mitochondria” (also present as a maquette) takes after its sub-cellular namesake: It’s a representational work that looks abstracted.

Many of these pieces bear the stylistic hallmarks of the mid-century milieu in which Rhoden learned and developed his craft. His early-1950s “Crucifixion” is one of several bronzes here that employ attenuated human forms suggesting medieval art, and hark to post-Picasso stylization. “African King and Queen” and “Safari” retain an essential dignity while sporting forms strongly redolent of their era.

Perhaps most memorable is 1989’s powerful “Slave Ship.” Though it’s only 3-feet-by-2-feet and about 18 inches tall, it’s monumental. The bronze ship teems with suffering bodies stacked three layers deep, and three more captives who are effectively crucified. There’s nothing else quite like it in the exhibit, and it seems an especially crucial statement in a day when some in Washington are pushing to restore Confederate monuments, which not so long ago seemed on their way out.

Rhoden and his wife, the Native American dancer and artist Richanda Rhoden, must have been among the most well-traveled people of their time. Rhoden studied in Rome and Indonesia and — as a video slide show of travel snapshots indicates — visited some two dozen other countries, from Egypt, Cambodia and India to Uganda, Greece, Norway and even the Soviet Union.

When did the guy have time to sculpt? In fact, much of Rhoden’s travels were under the auspices of the U.S. State Department, for whom the World War II-era Army Reserve Corps. veteran served as an art specialist for several years in the 1950s. (Diplomacy through art — can you imagine?)

Rhoden moved to New York in the late ’30s, and lived most of his life in Brooklyn, teaching in the public schools. A long stint in Indonesia in the early ’60s — funded by a Rockefeller Foundation grant – seems to have been especially influential on his art.

His productivity was a matter of personal preference and discipline. “Art is not a thing to be done in spurts,” he once said. “It must be consistently lived.”

Rhoden’s work ethic might remind visitors of Pittsburgh’s own Thad Mosley, still productive (and more widely acclaimed than ever) at age 99. Handily, three of Mosley’s abstract works sit outside the Rhoden show’s gallery door, along with a video display about his practice.

For a unique take on “Determined to Be,” visit the Wilson Center on Saturday, Sept. 6, when artist Petra Floyd will host the Kalimbrrd Sonic Workshop. Through sound, the event promises to “time-travel across the decades of Rhoden’s artistic career, activating objects that echo the sculptural forms of his work.”

“Determined to Be” continues through Oct. 27. Admission to the Wilson Center is free.