Richard Bock
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard W. Bock (1865-1949) was a American sculptor and associate of Frank Lloyd Wright.
He was born in Schloppe, Germany but moved to Chicago, Illinois with his family as a youth.
After three years in school in Berlin and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts School in Paris, in 1891 he returned to his American hometown of Chicago to establish a permanent sculpture studio downtown. Almost immediately upon his return to America, he received three major commissions. For the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 he sculpted major architectural works for two of the event's primary buildings, the Mining and Electricity Exposition Halls. He also won a competition to execute an exterior sculpture at the Indianapolis Public Library. He created interior sculpures for Chicago's famous Schiller Building. It was in the office of the architect of this building that Bock met Frank Lloyd Wright.
Bock also created the Elijah P. Lovejoy Monument in Alton, Illinois and a bronze group of sculptures in Chickamauga, Georgia. For the Omaha World's Fair in 1898, Bock composed all the sculptures for the Machinery and Electricity Building, a centerpiece of the fair. At the same time, he made the pediments for Omaha's Burlington Station.
During this time, impressed with the works of Bock's that he had seen, Frank Lloyd Wright asked Bock to create sculptures for Wright's home in Oak Park, Illinois and for other architectural projects that Wright was working on at the time.
On November 1, 1899, Bock married Martha Higgins Methven, sister of his colleague Harry Wallace Methven. After returning from their honeymoon, Bock won a competition to help create the Illinois monument at the Shiloh Civil War battlefield. He also worked on sculptures for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. From 1903 to 1913, Bock worked almost exclusively with Wright on a horse fountain project in Oak Park and that of Wright's Unity Temple. The two became close friends and their families often spent time together. Wright designed a sculpture studio for Bock.
Bock spent three years creating the figures for the Hippach Chapel at Chapel Hill Gardens West in Villa Park, Illinois. In 1929, he became the head of the Sculptural Department at the University of Oregon. After retiring in 1932, he completed his career with a possible design for a colossus for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago.
In the 1940s, Bock and his wife moved to California, where he completed his autobiography. He died at the age of 84 in 1949, of Parkinson's Disease.
After a researcher at Greenville College in Greenville, Illinois became interested in Bock and learned that his works did not have a permanent home in a museum, he contacted the sculptor's children, who remained in possession of the collection. The children, Thorwald Methven and Dorathi Bock Pierre, donated the collection to Greenville College in 1972 on the conditon that the collection always remain on display. The Richard W. Bock Sculpture Collection includes drawings, documents and photographs, and most importantly, over 300 bronze and plaster sculptures of Bock's. In addition, some of Frank Lloyd Wright's work which had never before been displayed became part of the collection. Recently renovated, the Bock museum has been redesigned as a fitting home for Bock's masterpieces.
