Theodore Conrad (1910-1984) was the preeminent American architectural model-maker, who during the course of a fifty-year career was commissioned to deliver over 3000 expertly-detailed architectural models, including such landmarks as Rockefeller Center, the Seagram Building, Lever House, and the Museum of Modern Art. Originally trained as an architect at the Pratt Institute, Conrad began constructing models in 1931, and quickly established himself as a pioneer in the use of plastics and metal for the models, attracting increasingly high-profile commissions from Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Edward Durrell Stone, and Skidmore Owings & Merrill, amongst many others. Conrad’s models, executed in his Jersey City studio, represented the earliest three-dimensional manifestation of many structures that are today accepted as modern architectural landmarks. Examples of Conrad’s work were included in the exhibition “The Architectural Model – Tool, Fetish, Small Utopia” at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt, in 2012. Other models are retained in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and at the Skyscraper Museum.

FERNAND LEGER (1881-1955)

A MODEL FOR A FOUNTAIN FOR THE 1939 WORLD'S FAIR, NEW YORK, 1930S

Details

FERNAND LEGER (1881-1955)
A MODEL FOR A FOUNTAIN FOR THE 1939 WORLD'S FAIR, NEW YORK, 1930s
executed by Theodore Conrad (1910-1984), brushed aluminum, brass, copper, plastic, painted wood, and with a piping system within a wooden base
overall: 44 ¾ in. (113.7 cm.) high, 31 in. (78.8 cm.) square
with label confirming name of project and designer

Provenance

Theodore Conrad, Jersey City;
Thence by descent to Doris Conrad Brown, Jersey City.

Lot Essay

As chairman of the advisory commission of architects for the New York World’s Fair of 1939, Harvey Wiley Corbett (1873-1954) commissioned Conrad to execute a concept of a fountain by the celebrated French artist and sculptor, Fernand Léger. The remarkable model that Conrad created, utilizing plastics and metals to translate Léger’s abstract, mechanistic construction, was designed to be fully-functioning, equipped with an extensive miniature plumbing system to replicate the performance of the fountain. This important and early model illustrates Conrad’s technical brilliance, and endures as a striking example of a concept for a large-scale sculptural work by Léger, that was unfortunately never realized at the World’s Fair.

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