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John Storrs
1885–1956
BirthplaceChicago, Illinois, United States of America
Death placeMer, Loir-et-Cher, France
BiographySculptor, painter, and printmaker John Henry Bradley Storrs created figural and non-objective works of powerful streamlined forms inspired by modern design. Storrs was the only surviving son of a wealthy Chicago architect and real estate developer, and the modern architecture of his native city is credited with influencing his art. Resisting expectations that he join his father's business, Storrs studied at various art institutions in the United States, including the schools at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts. He also traveled widely in Europe and studied sculpture in Berlin, Hamburg, and Paris. His most important teacher was French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), who remained a life-long friend. In a departure from his mentor's expressive naturalism, however, Storrs soon developed an individual style, influenced by contemporary trends toward abstraction and by so-called primitive art, in which he simplified the figure, emphasizing pure volumes, planes, and lines.
During the 1910s, Storrs was active as a printmaker, creating etchings and woodcut prints that he exhibited in Chicago and with the modernist group the Provincetown Printers. Storrs married French writer Marguerite Chabrol in 1915; during World War I the couple remained in France, where their daughter Monique was born in 1918. Two years later the sculptor's father died. After unsuccessfully challenging his will, which required Storrs to spend part of each year in the United States, Storrs forfeited his inheritance to become a resident of France and purchased a fifteenth-century château in Mer, southwest of Paris, where he lived until his death.
Storrs exhibited actively in both France and the United States. In the 1920s, he shifted his focus from the figure and made non-objective sculptures mostly in metal and stone. These took their forms from the slab-like planar masses and curving and angular geometric detail of contemporary Art Deco architecture. He collaborated directly with architects on several important commissions, including the figure of Ceres, goddess of grain, for the top of the new Chicago Board of Trade building, and relief sculpture for the Hall of Science at the 1933 Century of Progress exposition, also in his hometown. During the Great Depression, difficulty in obtaining sculptural materials induced Storrs to turn to painting, in which he explored non-representational forms—both biomorphic in their bulging intertwined curves and architectural in their angles, controlled lines, and smooth surfaces—that suggest the dream-like compositions of the contemporary movement known as surrealism.
During World War II, when his daughter Monique was involved with the French Resistance, Storrs was imprisoned twice by the Germans on suspicion of collaborating with the Allies. The experience left him mentally and physically impaired. In his last decade he returned to representation and figural work in low relief sculpture and other media suitable to his weakened state. Storrs died of cancer at the age of seventy-one. In the following decade, growing appreciation for the art of the 1930s renewed attention to the achievements of this American modernist.
During the 1910s, Storrs was active as a printmaker, creating etchings and woodcut prints that he exhibited in Chicago and with the modernist group the Provincetown Printers. Storrs married French writer Marguerite Chabrol in 1915; during World War I the couple remained in France, where their daughter Monique was born in 1918. Two years later the sculptor's father died. After unsuccessfully challenging his will, which required Storrs to spend part of each year in the United States, Storrs forfeited his inheritance to become a resident of France and purchased a fifteenth-century château in Mer, southwest of Paris, where he lived until his death.
Storrs exhibited actively in both France and the United States. In the 1920s, he shifted his focus from the figure and made non-objective sculptures mostly in metal and stone. These took their forms from the slab-like planar masses and curving and angular geometric detail of contemporary Art Deco architecture. He collaborated directly with architects on several important commissions, including the figure of Ceres, goddess of grain, for the top of the new Chicago Board of Trade building, and relief sculpture for the Hall of Science at the 1933 Century of Progress exposition, also in his hometown. During the Great Depression, difficulty in obtaining sculptural materials induced Storrs to turn to painting, in which he explored non-representational forms—both biomorphic in their bulging intertwined curves and architectural in their angles, controlled lines, and smooth surfaces—that suggest the dream-like compositions of the contemporary movement known as surrealism.
During World War II, when his daughter Monique was involved with the French Resistance, Storrs was imprisoned twice by the Germans on suspicion of collaborating with the Allies. The experience left him mentally and physically impaired. In his last decade he returned to representation and figural work in low relief sculpture and other media suitable to his weakened state. Storrs died of cancer at the age of seventy-one. In the following decade, growing appreciation for the art of the 1930s renewed attention to the achievements of this American modernist.