Voyage Houston September, 2018

Today we’d like to introduce you to Joe Gitterman.

Joe, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
Joe Gitterman has sculpted for 50 years. Yet it wasn’t until he retired from Wall Street that he devoted full time attention to his art. Since his first exhibition at a local Connecticut gallery in 2011, Joe Gitterman’s career has taken off. His work has been bought by both private and corporate collections and he has received commissions from Robert Couturier, Norwegian Cruise Lines, The Riverside Building in London, the Robert A.M. Stern designed Arris building in Washington D.C. and the Four Season’s Hotel in Houston, among others.

Gitterman’s sculpture was initially inspired by a love of ballet and modern dance. He states, “I thought about the movements of the dancers as a series of frames in an old celluloid film, and how just one of those frames could convey a fantastic sense of motion. I thought that capturing this ‘single frame of motion’ in a solid piece of sculpture would be a wonderful challenge.”

Sculpting maquettes in copper, wax or acrylic, Gitterman chooses to cast in bronze or fabricate in stainless steel. His work ranges from intimate hand size pieces to dramatic work well beyond human scale. The surface texture and color of each piece accentuates either dynamic movement or sensual form. Whether they are clean crisp stainless steel or bronze with a leather-like patina or a vibrant yellow knot, they are abstractions and gestures; they are about fluid form. He does not make editions thus each of his works is an original.

Do current events, local or global, affect your work and what you are focused on?
With the sad state that the world is in it seems that art is more important than ever. Many great writers have pointed out numerous benefits that art gives people and they are greatly need them now.