nique and indispensable contribution to postwar sculpture. One of the earliest works on view was Six Forms in Pine (1959), a carved-wood sculpture which brought Sugarman his first major recognition when it wona prize at the 1961 Carnegie International. Among the last of his unpainted works, it's a nearly 12-foot-long, smoothly flowing concatenation of horizontalabstract forms that rests on two pedestals set several feet apart. Rippling patterns of chisel marks are visible across every surface as are the strata of thelaminated wood. The forms, which range from gently swelling, landscape-like shapes to more sharply defined volumes that evoke architecture or hand tools,are clearly differentiated within the continuous overall structure. While the carving technique and biomorphism relate Six Forms in Pine to establishedsculptural styles of the 1950s, the sculpture also possesses properties which presage Sugarman's innovative work of the next decade. The double pedestalformat, in which the sculpture seems to be leaping off its bases, anticipates his subsequent elimination of the pedestal, and the emphatic horizontality of thesculpture is a move toward the extended structures of the artist's 1960s work. Sugarman's next phase was represented by three works: Blue and Red (1961), Second Red and Blue (1962) and Three Forms on a Pole (1962). As thetitles of the first two sculptures suggest, color is an important component of these works; the sculptures also show Sugarman's rapid elimination ofobviously hand-carved surfaces. Measuring 3 1/2 feet high and 5 feet long, Blue and Red is an open, carved-wood piece combining geometric uprights withmore organic cantilevered forms, all of which are painted in primary colors. Second Blue and Red, a modestly sized pedestal work, relies on similar colorsbut it takes a very different compositional approach. Balanced atop a chunky red form that suggests a bending torso is a horizontal blue element made fromflat,...
