Welcome to the virtual museum of the art and life of
Mr. Lee Oskar Lawrie: America’s Machine-Age Michelangelo.
Lawrie was the greatest Architectural Sculptor the world has ever known.
PLEASE COME BACK AND VISIT OFTEN; NEW CONTENT BEING ADDED DAILY.
Lee Lawrie
Lee Lawrie at the Locust Lane Farm, in the 1950s
30 Rockefeller Plaza
Christ at the entrance of St. Thomas Episcopal on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan
Iconic Atlas, by Lee Lawrie and Rene Chambellan
"The Red Man's Tree of Life" from the Nebraska State Capitol.
Phosphor and Hesper from the Los Angeles Central Public Library, designed by architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. Themes by Dr. Hartley Burr Alexander.
The Pasadena California World War One Memorial Flagstaff, at Colorado-- and Orange Grove Boulevards. 1926
The Crown of Bok Tower, in Lake Wales, FL, 1929.
Tank Treads-Motif, from the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Bridge, in Harrisburg, PA, c. 1931
The International Building, Rockefeller Center, This illustration represents the Four Races of Man and the Industrial Powers of the 1930s; the British, the American, and others. The constellations include the Big Dipper and the Southern Cross.
Documenting the Life and Sculpture of Lee Oskar Lawrie (1877-1963)
Few Artists, living or dead, were as prolific as Lee Lawrie.
His career spanned from the Gaslight Era—
to the dawn of the Space Age.
Lee Lawrie was a titan in the world of 20th Century American Art, creating Architectural Sculpture from Coast-to-Coast, for Seven Decades.
Among his credits, he was a pioneer of American Art Deco. Yet the world barely knows who he was; or the magnitude of his contribution to 20th Century American Art.
The purpose of this site is to change all that, and to identify, discuss, show and tell of the enormous presence of uncredited of his architectural sculpture, most of which went unsigned, unrecognized and/or largely forgotten.
Unlike most artists, the majority of Lawrie’s work is public art, that cannot be physically collected and displayed in a single gallery. To see it firsthand requires great amounts of travel, and research, such as I have undertaken over the better part of the past two decades.
LeeLawrie.com is the result of nearly two decades of research, travel, photography and writing. It is a virtual museum of Lawrie’s Art, in lieu of a single exhibition.
Lee Lawrie’s Prairie Deco: History in Stone at the Nebraska State Capitol, 4th Edition
is the first book written exclusively about his Largest Architectural Sculpture Commission of his career, which spanned from the Gaslight Era until the Space Age.
It captures all of the sculpture he created for the Nebraska Capitol, explains its symbolism to Nebraska’s History and culture, and tells the story of Democracy itself, introduced into the region by its European settlers in the 19th Century.
Few Artists, living or dead, were as prolific as Lee Lawrie.
His career spanned from the Gaslight Era
to the dawn of the Space Age.
Lawrie’s Iconic Bison Head, from the Bronze Indian Doors of the Nebraska State Capitol.
While the sculpture of Lee Lawrie is seen across America, (and beyond,) most people have never heard of perhaps the 20th Century’s most prolific artist, Lee Oskar Lawrie, (1877-1963).
Throughout the history of humanity, architecture has contained architectural sculpture, to communicate, to educate, to illustrate and to simply beautify the built environment.
Lee Lawrie’s career spanned, literally, from the GASLIGHT ERA through the dawn of the SPACE AGE. (1892-1963).
Up until he literally lay on his deathbed, Lawrie was creating sculpture.
Whether it was decoration enhancing buildings, plaques commemorating great men and women, or even tombstones, cenotaphs and mausoleums, Lawrie was constantly creating new works, at a pace that would leave most of his fellow artists in the dust.
In case you missed it during the pandemic,
LEE LAWRIE’S PRAIRIE DECO
WON A FINALIST MEDAL AT THE NEXTGEN INDIE BOOK AWARDS!!!
June 2020. The Next Generation Indie Book Awards is “the largest international awards program for indie authors and independent publishers.” Category: General Non-Fiction.
Here is an animation of Lawrie’s 1936 folio, simply "called “Sculpture.” It runs a couple of minutes on YouTube.
Beginning at the age of fourteen, Lawrie found his niche, as an apprentice to Chicago sculptor Richard Henry Parks. He would soon take the skills he mastered under Parks and he found work at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. While working at the Fair, he apprenticed under Alexander Phimister Proctor and also worked with Daniel Chester French, and master 19th Century sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. He also befriended many of sculpture’s rising young stars, like Gutzon Borglund and Karl Bitter.