In honor of Women’s History Month, the Museum of American Porcelain Art (MAPA) has mounted an exhibit recognizing seven women who made major contributions to the history of art porcelain. Five of them represent the Cybis studio; each has an Artist Profile on this site (bolded links). Museum Curator Carey Barone designed the lovely wall-spanning [...]
The porcelains that freelance artist Gertrude Fass created for Cybis are only one part of her artistic legacy. Among her other endeavors were wonderful portrait busts in terracotta clay. This material was among the first that humans used to create ‘fired’ objects (as opposed to objects made from natural unfired clay) and the word itself [...]
Although unknown to the Cybis collecting community, Gertrude Fass created some of the studio’s most well-known portrait figures. Mrs. Fass was not only a sculptor, however; she was also a painter and a writer for print, radio, stage and screen. Born Gertrude Joan Kossoff in July 1909 to parents Philip Kossoff and Rachel Gindes, she [...]
We now shift focus from the smallest (smallest limited editions) to the largest: This post identifies the top five sculptors who created the modern-day Cybis porcelains, in terms of how many sculptures they created for the studio (whether or not they were released by Cybis as retail items.) Retail editions that were sold as a [...]
In addition to their various child/baby busts, nursery rhyme and fairytale characters, the Cybis studio produced many sculptures within their general category called 'Children to Cherish.' They were all non-limited editions. The pieces from the 1950s and 1960s predated this category concept which was introduced the following decade. On the 1963 price list, the only [...]
Among the various Cybis porcelain ‘genres’ (generalized categories) there is a small group called the Classical Impressions. All except two were limited editions, and most were introduced during the 1980s. Leda and the Swan is 9” high and 13” wide on its base and was a declared limited edition of 500 white bisque sculptures at [...]
Angels and cherubs emerged from the Cybis studio ever since its earliest days in 1940s New York where Boleslaw and Marja Cybis created their frescoes and sculptures. The angels below are listed chronologically. None of them were limited editions. An intriguing group of six angels produced between 1940 and 1942 in “papka” composition was the [...]
Euterpe, the Greek muse of song and music, certainly inspired the artists of Cybis at various times during the past decades (her compatriot Terpsichore is reflected in their ballet sculptures.) Their first two such studies were both limited editions that appeared in 1967 but reflected very different musical genres. This evocative study of Arturo Toscanini’s [...]
Cybis’ various representations of madonnas (old and newer), other religious figures and popes appear in other posts, but the studio also produced several Old Testament character portraits as well. All were limited editions and are shown below in chronological order by introduction year. The first of these was Moses ‘The Great Lawgiver’. It was an [...]
Continuing the review of Cybis’ literature-based portraits naturally leads to their interpretations of characters and creatures from Greek, Roman and Asian mythology. The actual appearance of the first two mythological studies is unknown. One, titled Greek Head, is known only from a single text list of names in the 1974 catalog; I am going to [...]
THE CYBIS ARCHIVE 