Dimitri Hadzi
Title: Thebes III
Medium: Patinated Bronze on Fossil Stone. No date
Location:

This piece is part of a gift of roughly 30 small sculptures from artist Arthur Cohen to the Luskin Art Collection

Dimitri Hadzi was an American-born sculptor who taught at Harvard from 1975-89.

In 1982, Hadzi was commissioned to create a monumental sculpture for Stanford University’s Cantor Sculpture Garden. It is somewhat similar to the piece in front of you, except that it’s so large that a person can actually walk through the middle of it.

This piece bears a stylistic similarity to a very important sculpture in UCLA’s Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, a large-scale bas-relief created by Henri Matisse in 1930.

This Matisse “Back” is part of a series of four large-scale bas-reliefs created between 1909 and 1930. A total of 12 sets were made, including one for the artist’s family. Today, nine complete sets are on view in major museums around the world, including here at UCLA.