Accession Number:
1978.21.2
Comments:
Alice Morgan Wright was the most important early-twentieth-century artist to have lived most of her life in Albany. Her early works were influenced by Auguste Rodin, and later she incorporated elements of Cubism and Futurism into her art. She worked slowly and moved back and forth from a conservative style to modernist works such as The Fist that established Wright's significance as one of the few Americans doing abstract sculpture in the first decades of the century. This work was completed and exhibited in 1921, the year after American women won the right to vote. It is likely that the clenched fist symbolizes the militant struggle for women's rights in which Wright had been passionately engaged for nearly two decades.
