Jane Manus

Minimal and Post-Minimal: Sculpture Beyond the White Cube by Annalisa Rimaudo 

What you see is what you see” declared Frank Stella (1936-2024) of his work, neatly summing up one of the central characteristics of Minimal Art, in contrast with the Abstract Expressionism that preceded it. If we are to take this phrase literally, what “we see” is essentially the work of male artists. When F. Stella started work on his radical black striped paintings in 1959, however, the Cuban artist Carmen Herrera (1915-2022) had already been producing striped acrylics since the early 1950s.

Minimal Art has undeniably been historicised as masculine, a bias that is evident when we look at the creators chosen by art history to represent the movement: they are the omnipresent characters of the time, part of an art scene structured by a powerful patriarchy. The movement has been theorized mainly by men and not only by artists, such as Donald Judd (1928-1994) and Robert Morris (1931-2018). The term itself was introduced by Robert Wollheim in his article “Minimal Art”, published in Arts Magazine in 1965, in which he analyses this then-dominant artistic movement as a fundamentally reductionist form, resting on ideas of non-intervention as applied to the found object and the essentialism of monochrome inherited from two great male artists, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) and Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967).

Yet one cannot deny that women artists and critics are also protagonists here. And, though the qualifier “minimal” has historically been favoured over “ABC Art”, the term put forward by Barbara Rose, several women artists represented the movement, both “in” and “off” the scene, from its very beginnings.

JANE MANUS “Undaunted” exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA

 Jane Manus celebrates change through the illusion of geometric forms. Her bold abstract sculptures are now on display at the Georgia Museum of Art  in its Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden in the exhibition “Jane Manus, Undaunted” through February 12, 2023. Five large works show a variety of balance, movement and abstraction, and smaller maquettes are on view inside the museum, allowing visitors to follow the artist’s dynamic creative process.

With construction of Silver Palm Park in the downtown finally underway and work at the adjacent Wildflower Park slated to start soon, the parks’ art components have been selected. Two sculptures will be loaned to the city by the Boca Raton Museum of Art and will be placed along the waterfront in each park. The artists are Jane Manus of West Palm Beach and Jeff Whyman of Delray Beach.

The city is commissioning two other works by artists with May + Watkins Design of Athens, New York, that will be located at the corners of each park closest to the intersection of Palmetto Park Road and Fifth Avenue. They will be similar and are intended to thematically connect the two parks while representing nature and the coast.

The aluminum works, both over 10 feet tall, depict leaves and flowers in pastel shades of green, yellow and blue with accents of bright coral. The one destined for Silver Palm Park will incorporate that tree. Both will be illuminated, Jennifer Bistyga, the city’s coastal program manager, told the council on Nov. 22.

You may not be able to eat in Gwyneth Paltrow’s dining room or hang on Oprah's Montecito patio, but with more A-list decorators branching into restaurant interior design, you can tap into the style of the stars. Many designers best known for the celebrity projects in their portfolios have recently expanded to projects at eateries around the world. It’s an opportunity to showcase to a wider audience their prowess in pattern mixing, furniture and art sourcing, and creating a mood where you want to linger long after the final course. Because restaurants, of course, are about more than just design. These spaces also serve as places to gather for cocktails or enjoy delicious food. Below, we gather some examples of spaces where you can indulge in style.

View images of our recent collaboration with Wecselman Design at the Ritz-Carlton Residences in Miami Beach.

This gorgeous model villa Z includes work by Donald Baechler, Dan Christensen, Gabriele Evertz, Max-Steven Grossman, Jane Manus, Donald Martiny, James Austin Murray, Udo Noger, Donald Sultan and Tigran Tsitoghdzyan.

View images of our recent collaboration with Wecselman Design at One Park Grove, Miami.

This stunning model unit includes work by Lluis Barba, Stanley Boxer, Lynn Chadwick, Dan Christensen, Max-Steven Grossman, Jane Manus, Donald Martiny, James Austin Murray, Udo Noger, Ernest Trova, Tigran Tsitoghdzyan and Bernar Venet.

By Nancy Stetson

When Jane Manus can't sleep, she puts together shapes in various combinations in her head: straight lines, squares, rectangles. Never circles. Never anything with curves. The West Palm Beach sculptor is attracted to geometric shapes and angles and strong lines that may jut out straight or bend sharply. And her work reflects that.

“I don’t do circles,” she says. “I don’t have anything against them. It’s just not me.”

When she first began creating her abstract sculpture, she originally worked in steel.

“Over the years, I found my own signature,” she says. “When people look at the work, or have seen a number of my sculptures, they can tell a piece of mine from someone else’s.

“I was working with these different pieces of metal and I was able to do what I wanted to do with them, to express what how I wanted the works to look with these materials. The more I worked with them, there seemed to be more shapes I could create.”

Even after almost 45 years of being a professional artist, she hasn’t run out of different ways to juxtapose these elements.

Azure Development's $2,190,000 show house in Delray Beach hosts thirteen artworks from Sponder Gallery's roster of important artists.

Artists Include:

Stanley Boxer, Dan Christensen, Max-Steven Grossman, Kysa Johnson, Jane Manus, Donald Martiny, James Austin Murray, Udo Noger, Tigran Tsitoghdzyan and James Walsh

SPONDER GALLERY is pleased to announce the installation of a monumental sculpture by Jane Manus at The Bristol, Palm Beach’s most expensive luxury condominium. The namesake work stands 23 feet tall, and weighs over 1,000 lbs. 

Jane Manus has been continuously developing her oeuvre of forceful geometric sculptures since the 1970s, when as a young artist at the Art Institute of Boston she learned to weld metal into sculpture, an experience Manus describes as a breakthrough in her artistic career. Manus’ work has indeed evolved, and today she works exclusively in aluminum. Her vibrant sculptures seamlessly integrate disparate elements of geometry, thereby truly transforming the spaces that they inhabit. Dynamic shapes and massive forms penetrate the viewer’s space, and seem to move and change in appearance due to their extreme three-dimensionality. Abstract though they are, Manus’ sculptures also retain an unyielding expressive character that gives each work a life and spirit of its own. Jane Manus was born in New York in 1951, and is based in West Palm Beach, Florida. Her work is found in many important collections, including The Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL; The Lincoln Center/List Collection, New York; the Georgia Museum of Art; Syracuse University; Herbert F Johnson Museum at Cornell University, NY; Cornell Museum of Art, Winter Park, FL.

 The Bristol is a 610,000 square-foot luxury condominium in the heart of West Palm Beach, Florida. The 25-story building is located on the Intracoastal Waterway overlooking Palm Beach Island, and includes 67 units, 12 guest suites, two parking levels, and several amenity areas. Units range from $7 to $14 million, although prices have gone higher for penthouse levels. Construction began three years ago on the site of the former Chapel-by-the-Lake.

January 26 - February 20, 2019 | 6215 South Flagler, West Palm Beach, FL

Sponder Gallery participated in the 2019 edition of the Kips Bay Showhouse in West Palm Beach, Florida. Works by Dan Christensen, Jane Manus, Donald Martiny, Ernest Trova and Larry Zox are in view in spaces designed by Leanne Yarn, Andres Paradelo and Amy Meier.

Each year, celebrated interior designers transform a luxury Manhattan home and a Palm Beach residence into an elegant exhibition of fine furnishings, art and technology. This all began in 1973 when several dedicated supporters of Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club launched the Kips Bay Decorator Show House to raise critical funds for much needed after school and enrichment programs for New York City children. Over the course of four decades, this project has grown into a must-see event for thousands of design enthusiasts and is renowned for sparking interior design trends throughout the world. The Show House receives as many as 15,000 guests annually from across the nation. Since its inception, the Show House has raised over $21,000,000 for Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, which currently reaches over 10,000 young people at nine locations throughout the Bronx. Today, the club is proudly one of the most prominent and responsive youth development agencies in New York City and a “flagship” of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.