Georg John Lober | |
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circa 1911
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Born | November 7, 1891 |
Died | December 14, 1961 (aged 70) |
Nationality | American |
Known for | sculptor |
Georg John Lober (November 7, 1891 – December 14, 1961) was an American sculptor.
Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1892, Lober moved to Keyport, New Jersey as a teenager. Lober studied sculpture at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design and at the National Academy of Design, and was an apprentice of Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum.
His bas reliefs of Robert Fulton and Henry Hudson in 1909 were his first major works. A bronze statue of Eve that he created for the 1939 New York World's Fair in Flushing, Queens was destroyed by vandals. A 1949 sculpture of Thomas Paine is located in Morristown, New Jersey's Burnham Park.
He was appointed to the New York City Municipal Art Commission in 1942, which was responsible for supervising the artistic quality of all city matters and served as its executive secretary from 1943 to 1960. He was tasked in 1946 by Mayor of New York City William O'Dwyer to restore portraits in New York City Hall that had deteriorated severely. A June 1950 editorial in The New York Times thanked Lober and the Art Commission, saying that they "deserve a pat on the back for their careful and painstaking work" in preserving the city's heritage for future generations.
Lober created an 8 feet (2.4 m) seated figure of Hans Christian Andersen on a granite bench for New York City's Central Park, that was cast in bronze at Long Island City's Modern Art Foundry. The statue was designed to accompany an outdoor center for story-telling, and was placed on a 40-foot square stone platform surrounded by benches, trees and shrubs. The $75,000 cost of the monument was covered in part by contributions from Danish and American schoolchildren.