This second part of his Artist Profile will delve into his work after his 1965 departure from the Cybis porcelain studio. The Ispanky Studios After leaving Cybis, Ispanky found an investor named George Utley and opened his own studio. A 1973 article in the New York Times related that He bought an old garage in [...]
Laszlo Ispanky was one of only five artists who were ever publicly identified by name in Cybis advertising literature as having created Cybis sculptures (the others were Marja Cybis, Marylin Chorlton, Lynn Klockner Brown, and Patricia Eakin); their names appear in the early pages of the studio’s 1964 and 1965 catalogs. However, Ispanky is the [...]
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 [...]
The recent liquidation of the Cybis Studio’s holdings has turned up quite a few surprises but perhaps none so much as a small group of stylized pieces that simply don’t fall into any category previously known. For lack of any better appellation, I’m going to call them the Helmet Heads. This wasn’t actually the first [...]
During the 'golden age' of the Cybis studio's production (1960s and 1970s) their pieces were regularly chosen to be official Gifts of State from our country to foreign dignitaries. Presidents Nixon and Ford were particularly fond of doing so, in fact, but in reality that process doesn't begin in the Oval Office. So where does [...]
There is a small group of Cybis pieces that depart noticeably from the 'recognizably Cybis' retail design aesthetic. All of them were created during the first half of the 1960s and designed by Laszlo Ispanky. Flight Into Egypt is 13" high and was offered in 1960 in white bisque only. It is attached to a [...]
Almost none of the Cybis birds produced after 1960 resemble the early birds of the 1950s in style, and all of them were created in bisque (matte) porcelain. The sculptures below are sorted by decade according to their introduction year. The Cybis Owls shows those birds in more detail than is mentioned here, and the [...]
The Cybis studio has a long history of bird studies, with a few dating as far back as the 1940s; those are recognizably different from those produced during the 1950s and beyond. The Cybis birds produced during the 1950s show a gradually evolving style mix which coalesced into a permanent and definitive look beginning in [...]
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 [...]
Turning now from the mythological and Shakespearean genres to a more wide-ranging overview of the literary characters as portrayed by Cybis, we find that quite a few of them are from the medieval era. The bust of Beatrice, from The Inferno, is 12” high overall and a limited edition of 700. Designed by Laszlo Ispanky, [...]
THE CYBIS ARCHIVE 