Sculptor John Rhoden’s first retrospective will be on view at PAFA

The sculptor John Rhoden lived a remarkable life — as robust as his nine-foot bronze Nesaika that graces the front of Philadelphia’s African American Museum.

From Oct. 5 through April 7, his work will be on display in “Determined to Be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden” at PAFA. Through about 70 of his works in bronze, stone, and wood, as well as archival materials, the exhibit will seek to tell the story of an artist some people say is unsung, yet ahead of his time.

The exhibit is the first retrospective of this expansive artist who once summarized his work saying: “I put every feeling, every passion — everything I have — into sculpting. Someone asked me why I do it: there are so many easier things. I can only say this: sculpting is my life.”

Born in 1916 in Birmingham, Ala., in the heart of the Jim Crow South to a family of modest means, Rhoden’s life in the arts began as a little boy, playing in the wet, red Alabama clay on a hillside by his childhood home.

“It seemed a wonderful thing to take handfuls and shape it into different forms. Even then it was exciting, and even then I knew it was sculpture,” he said in a 1966 article in Topic Magazine. “Well, I have never lost that excitement. I am still excited by pure form, and shaping it is an act of love. Treat any material with love, and I think you can almost make it come alive.”

He studied at Columbia University on the GI Bill and abroad on a Fulbright scholarship, ultimately producing a large body of work.

“He was really expansive in his thinking about modernism and internationalism,” said Brittany Webb, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ curator of 20th century art and the John Rhoden Collection.

While many artists in the 1950s and ‘60s were focused on producing art in a particularly American tradition, Webb noted, Rhoden traveled the world as a sculptor with the State Department. He connected with artists like Serbian sculptor Ana Bešlić and trained under Richmond Barthé.

“That’s the kind of thing we take for granted now, that contemporary artists would care about that, but that interested him in the 1950s,” Webb said. “I think there’s something that’s just really generous and forward-thinking about that, that came to a lot of artists later.”

Rhoden also didn’t chase fame.

“He would say things like, ‘I’m not necessarily in this to get really famous,’ ” said Webb.

Between grants, government work, art commissions that included Lincoln University and New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, and teaching art to students in the New York City schools, Rhoden was not dependent on galleries or patrons for support.

“He was known very well to working artists in his time,” Webb said.

He and his wife, Richenda, also an artist, were vital members of the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood where they had their home and studios. They taught children and started community festivals like the Cranberry Street Festival that became neighborhood traditions.

When Rhoden died in 2001 at age 82, he was admired by those in the art community who knew his work, but many felt he deserved more attention. His wife died in 2016, shortly before she would have turned 100.

In 2017, PAFA was given 278 of Rhoden’s works and a wealth of archival material by his estate, along with the responsibility to protect and preserve his legacy. With the help of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, PAFA created an extensive permanent online Rhoden archive. About 25 of the sculptures in the exhibit will remain permanently at PAFA, while others will find homes in other institutions.

“Determined to Be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden” at Pennsylvannia Academy of the Fine Arts, Oct. 5, 2023 – April 7, 2024. www.pafa.org/museum/exhibitions/determined-be-sculpture-john-rhoden