John Safer

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John H. Safer (September 6, 1922 – December 7, 2018) was an American sculptor. Safer's varied career spanned work in theater lighting, television, real estate, politics and banking.

Safer was best known for his monumental sculptures, but he has also created many smaller works. These include award sculptures for organizations such as the National Air and Space Museum, the PGA Tour, the Georgetown University Lombardi Cancer Center, the World Peace Foundation, and the Shakespeare Guild.

Safer's works stand in museums, galleries and embassies throughout the world. In 1972 and in 1989 the U.S. Department of State sent a group of Safer sculptures abroad to be exhibited as examples of America's finest art. He died in December 2018 at the age of 96.^[1][2]

Sculpture

Safer's earliest sculptures in the 1950s and 1960s were small works of

"Through his work, John has tried to capture the essence and reduce the subject to the pure line in space that Aristotle believed to be the basis of sculpture."^[5]

Early life

John Safer was born and raised in

Safer continued as a precocious student. Fluent in French, he entered high school at the age of eleven and graduated when he was fourteen. He was pressured by his mother to enroll at Harvard University. Safer, uncomfortable at the thought of being a fourteen-year-old college student, deliberately failed the Harvard entrance exam by handing in blank pages.^[6]

Safer instead attended Woodward Prep School. There he discovered his love for and ability in athletics. This theme would greatly influence his art and his life. Until then, his age and size had prevented him from participating in sports and left him with the sense that he was a misfit.

At the age of sixteen, Safer entered

Safer became a

In 1953 Safer's father became terminally ill and he returned to Washington, D.C. to take over his father's affairs. Although Safer successfully parlayed these into a major real estate development business he did not find his commercial life a rewarding one.

In 1974 Safer entered the world of banking, becoming chairman of the executive committee of Financial General Bankshares, and in 1981 the chairman of the Board of DC National Bank which later became part of Bank of America.

In 1999 Safer became chairman of the Board of Materia, Inc. Materia specializes in Olefin metathesis, and is noted for its Nobel Prize–winning Green chemistry.

Sculptor

Safer never formally studied art. His first forays into sculpture were experiments with plastic swizzle sticks. In 1957 he made his first creations, and he continued to experiment, eventually beginning to carve

In 1971 the renowned art collector and

In 1972 President

In 1985 Safer was invited to exhibit sculpture in the Pioneers of Flight Hall at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C. He has the distinction of being the only artist to have ever had an exhibition in the central gallery of the most visited museum in the world.[1]

In 1989 the

Safer continues to create sculpture. He works with his stepdaughter Kathryn Scott, to whom he taught his trade and offered his mantle.

Safer explains the motivation behind his sculpture:

At its best, sculpture can give a glimpse of the relationship between that which lies within us and that which does not. I strive to make works that will elevate the human spirit. What I see and try to capture is the movement of beauty. I try to freeze a line of motion that expresses strength, power, or grace. I try to grasp and make permanent something that is ephemeral.

What I aspire to, as an artist, is contained in the philosophy of the Golden Age of Greece: Truth is beauty; nothing in excess; know thyself. The essential thought behind the creation of my Sculpture is humanity. My goal is to increase the awareness of the beauty of life for myself and for others.

I read once that

Mozart could conceptualize a whole symphony in an instantaneous flash. Then he would have the laborious task of committing it to paper. This struck a chord, Mozartian I hope, in me. That's the way I create most of my sculpture. I get a kind of instantaneous flash, a look, a total concept, and then I have to give it substance, make it occupy space.^[12]

Safer's interest in sports has provided the inspiration behind many of his sculptures. Dancer and the Dance, Serve, Before the Wind, and Line of Flight are works that capture a line of athletic motion.^[13]

As a youngster, Safer was ahead of, and therefore smaller than his classmates in school, so it was later that he discovered his own athletic prowess.^[14] Safer has awards in marksmanship, baseball and bowling. Safer, now ninety, still plays competitive golf. In November 2012, Safer and his partner Jack Frazee won the Lyford Cay Shootout. Later that week, Safer and his team won the "B" flight in the Lyford Cay Four-Ball Invitational tournament, a tournament they won in 2007, when Safer was 85.

Honours

Safer has been awarded two honorary degrees:

Safer explains the motivation behind his career:

There is one other basic principle that guides my work, my business career, and my life in general, and that is balance. I believe that the Aristotelian golden mean is as good a guiding philosophy for life as you can find. In business, I adhere to it continually, trying to balance the necessity for a successful business always to move forward with the caveat that too much motion can be counterproductive or unnecessarily dangerous. In art, the human spirit is gratified by balance, by a tonic note. And so I try to express a sense of balance and completeness in my work.^[17]

Bibliography

• Guinness Book of World Records, 1990 By Donald McFarlan, Norris Dewar McWhirter, David A. Boeh Contributor David A. Boeh Published by Guinness Superlatives, 1989
  ISBN 978-0-8069-5790-6
  - Largest Clock called,Timepiece designed by John Safer
• John Safer By Frank Getlein, John Safer Published by J.J. Binns, 1982 Original from the University of Michigan

• Art in Flight: The Sculpture of John Safer By Walter J. Boyne, John Safer, David Finn Photographs by David Finn

Contributor David Finn Published by Hudson Hills Press, 1992 Original from the University of Michigan Digitized Nov 13, 2007