Carl Paul Jennewein

Carl Paul Jennewein (1890-1978) was a highly regarded and successful American sculptor of the mid-twentieth century. He immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1907, and within four years of his arrival he began receiving important national and international art commissions that drew upon his skills as an ornamental sculptor and as a painter. He is widely recognized as among the artists who popularized the Art Deco style in the United States. Active throughout the early to mid-twentieth century, Jennewein created works that ranged from intimate small-scale bronze sculptures to major architectural projects. Cast in bronze, his works adorn gardens and fountains and significant works of architecture throughout the country and abroad. His creations not only reveal the inspiration of the ancient world but also engage with the new sculptural styles appearing in Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Jennewein was seventeen when he emigrated to the United States. He worked initially as an apprentice in an architectural sculpture studio in New York and continued his studies at the Art Students League. In 1916 he was awarded the Prix de Rome, one of the most prestigious honors available to a young American sculptor, which took him to the American Academy in Rome from 1917 to 1921. His years in Rome deepened his engagement with classical antiquity and gave him the technical grounding for the ambitious public commissions that would define his career.

Jennewein's most celebrated architectural project is the great pediment of the north wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, executed in polychrome terracotta between 1932 and 1933, one of the boldest experiments in colored architectural sculpture in twentieth-century America. He also produced sculptures for the Federal Trade Commission Building and the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., the British Empire Building at Rockefeller Center in New York, and numerous other important American public buildings. His smaller cabinet bronzes, including his celebrated Cupid and Gazelle, translated the same synthesis of classical grace and Art Deco stylization to the intimate scale of the collector's shelf.

Jennewein was elected to the National Academy of Design and received major recognition throughout his career, both in the United States and abroad. His sculptures are held in significant public and private collections, and he remains one of the essential figures in the American Art Deco movement.