Artist Who Left 1,200 Sculptures In An Abandoned Alley Will Forever Remain A Mystery
A man named Robert Leitch was roaming the streets of South Philadelphia in the late 1970s when something metallic caught his eye. Upon closer investigation, Leitch discovered the glint of metal revealed something far stranger -- an inexplicable army of bundled wire sculptures, compact torpedoes of trash that emitted a spellbinding force.
There were around 1,200 of these mysterious art objects, left out in an abandoned alley. Leitch gathered each and every silvery thingamajig and, for a while, kept them in his attic. It was trash night, and had Leitch been just a half hour later or a bit less observant, the twisted oeuvre of the Philadelphia Wireman would have been lost forever.
"It was an accident that the worked survived," collector and dealer John Ollman explained to The Huffington Post. "There were probably hundreds more artists whose work made it into the garbage truck. The creative instinct is a pretty powerful one. If it's not made in a formal system, it's a matter of what survives."
Ollman first encountered the work of the Wireman in 1984, when employees at his gallery Fleisher/Ollman introduced him to Leitch. Immediately, Ollman was moved by the inscrutable power of the gnarled objects, small enough to fit in your hand. The motley parcels, held together by a wiry exoskeleton, morphed into something otherworldly, their bottle caps glowing like alien gems and masking tape resembling skin pulled taut. Ollman purchased 650 of them right away, a little more than half. (He'd soon return for the rest.)
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This person's hands must be vise grips.
They have a Giocametti-look.
If I left some of my paintings in an alley, the trash collectors would do what trash collectors do … which is NOT to collect it, rather than to …
… trash it!
Just imagine what it would take to individually name each one of these "works of art" ...
Pliers per hand???
Exactly so. I mean looking at the sculptures it soon becomes apparent that I have no clue how some of these objects were made. The sheer strength alone; but, to hold some of the objects inside, the way they are done.... is quite creative.
That is so intricate! What an artist can dream and create always fascinates. Thank you for sharing these remarkable objects created that might never have made it safely out of that alley.