Bronze Top Hat Sculpture. Full scale bronze sculpture of a top hat with a unique pinched front and indented crown, not dissimilar from a Homburg. Finished exterior, patinated interior. Jagged interior brim, indicating it may have been from a larger sculpture at some point. 

Size: 5 x 10 1/4 in. 

#5060 . 

During the early 1930s Paris, France became the host to artists from Russia, Germany, the Netherlands and other European countries affected by the rise of totalitarianism. Sculptures using organic/geometric forms began to appear, as mathematically based ideas and concepts of abstraction took root. As the political situation worsened in the mid 1930s many artists fled to London. The first exhibition of British abstract sculpture was held in England in 1935, and after World War II Minimalism, Assemblage, and Installation Art all found major footholds in the medium, dispersed throughout the world in an artistic diaspora due to the devastation of Europe. Although a boom in public art resulting from the demand for war memorials mainly benefited figural sculptors at first, by the late 1960s Picasso, Dali, and other Surrealists helped popularize abstraction fully. The use of aluminum, once scarce before the World Wars, exploded as techniques for creating and shaping it dramatically approved, and the ability to use lightweight metals like it became a boon to new artists in the 1980s such as Bill Keating and Jorge Blanco. Site specific and environmental art also benefited from longer lasting and less harmful products being used, helping to foster community, education, and even nationalistic ideals by engaging with viewers in new and unique ways. Metal sculptures can be sensitive to environmental conditions, however, such as temperature, humidity and exposure to light and ultraviolet light. In the early 21st Century the value of metals rose to such an extent that theft of massive bronze sculptures for the value of the metal became a problem; sculptures worth millions with an even richer historical value being stolen and melted down for the relatively low value of the metal is perhaps one of the most disturbing trends to emerge from industrialized society.