Clara Sorensen Explained

Clara Barth Leonard Sorenson Dieman
Birth Name:Clara Barth Leonard
Birth Place:Indianapolis, Indiana
Death Place:Santa Fe, New Mexico
Nationality:American
Education:John Herron Art Institute, Art Institute of Chicago
Field:Sculpture
Spouse:Niels Sorenson and later Charles Dieman[1]

Clara Barth Leonard Sorenson Dieman (1877–1959) was an American sculptor, painter and teacher from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Sorensen studied at the John Herron Art Institute[2] in Indianapolis and was a student of several well-known artists including William Forsyth, Alexander Archipenko and Lorado Taft,[3] who she worked on Fountain of Time with.[4] She also worked with Victor Brenner.[5] Between 1907 and 1916, Leonard returned to the John Herron Art Institute to teach introductory sculpture classes. In 1917, she graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago, where she had been a student of Taft's, and she later studied at Columbia University as well.

Clara Barth Leonard was married twice, to Niels Sorenson and to Charles Dieman.[6]

During her career as a sculptor, Sorenson frequently worked in portraiture, completing a bas-relief of William A. Bell for the Indianapolis school of the same name, and in 1916, a bronze memorial plaque in honor of Shortridge High School custodian James Biddy.[7] She participated in a number of art exhibitions across the United States, including in Chicago, Illinois, New York, New York, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Santa Fe, New Mexico,[8] where she spent the latter part of her life.[9]

For a while Dieman lived in Denver, Colorado; Taft places her there in 1925 [10] and while there she worked and studied with Robert Garrison at least until 1929.[11]

Works

Notes and References

  1. Web site: DIEMAN, Clara Sorensen (1877 - 1957), Sculptor. Oxford Index. 2011 . Oxford University Press. 10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00172376 . 19 May 2017.
  2. Book: Cuba. Stan. The Denver Artists Guild. 6 May 2015. University Press of Colorado. 9781457195952. 19 May 2017.
  3. Book: Peter Hastings Falk . Who was who in American Art 1564-1975 Vol. 1 . Sound View Press . 1999 . 915.
  4. Indianapolis News. September 11, 1959. “Clara Dieman, Sculptor, Dead in New Mexico.”
  5. Book: Burnet. Mary Quick. Art and Artists of Indiana. 1921. Century. New York. 9780548848074. 395. 7 March 2015.
  6. Book: DIEMAN, Clara Sorensen (1877 - 1957), Sculptor. Benezit Dictionary of Artists. 2006. Oxford University Press . 10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00172376 . 9780199899913.
  7. Indianapolis News. October 10, 1916. “Biddy Tablet at Shortridge.”
  8. Book: Judith Vale Newton . Carol Ann Weiss . Skirting the Issue: Stories of Indiana's Historical Women Artists . Historical Society Press . 2004 . 269–271.
  9. Book: John Powers . Deborah Powers . Texas Painters, Sculptors, and Graphic Artists . Woodmont Books . 2000 . 136.
  10. Taft, Lorado, ‘’The History of American Sculpture’’, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1925 p. 586
  11. Schlosser, Elizabeth, ‘’Modern Sculpture in Denver (1919-1960): Twelve Denver Sculptors’’, Ocean View Books, Denver CO 1995 p. 20