Metaphor in the sculpture of American artist Donald De Lue praises gods, prophets, and heroes with the splendor of human form, characterizing movement and gesture as meaning, celebrating or memorializing a point in history or the present.  Throughout his long career-he worked to the end of his life at age 89-he found reason to illustrate a concept or idea with energetic figural marbles or bronzes that cavorted through space as if gravity were not present.  His commissions for war memorials, public monuments, and architectural sculptures can be found in great numbers wherever memories of distinguished Americans were required or qualities of heroic myths were intended to convey meaning. Comprehension of the history of art exudes in De Lue’s work.  Though he was not classically trained and can claim only minimal academic instruction at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the artist learned his skills through the difficult process of holding numerous apprenticeships at the beginning of career.  Born in Boston in 1897, where he barely finished a high school education, De Lue worked exhaustively at studios of various sculptors making models and plaster casts for their designs rather than for his own. Though his background included a vigorous routine of drawing and modeling from the living figure, he was advised by one of his early teachers to draw from memory after he had grasped the anatomy of the figure.  This would assure that his figures would have creative substance rather than copied presence.  He worked under a maxim of Michelangelo, which advised the artist to train the memory so that he can do it over and over again.  Years later, with an assumption of his own consummate understanding of the figure, De Lue explained, I won’t ever use a model any more.  I draw from what I think it should be.  A model can’t give you anything, it hasn’t got any meaning, there is no energy to it.  A model is a placid thing that stands still and has no movement.1 One of the strongest facets in De Lue’s work is his involvement with battlefield memorials and war monuments.  His sculptures appear at a time in U.S. history when the war memorial was at risk of being turned into such “practical” gestures of honor for the deceased as academic scholarships, beds in hospitals, public parks, or community swimming pools.  The polemics that arose after World War II shouted down traditional forms of memorials.  “Jefferson will be forever imprisoned in that round appallingly permanent banality,” said a Harvard University dean of the Washington, D.C. monument shaped like an ancient Greek temple.  Thus “Memorials That Live” became the by-word for public monuments.  However, one critic wrote that the utility test in celebrating heroes is like giving a pair of shoes to a child for a Christmas present.2 In contrast to the hundreds of living memorials that were awarded in the aftermath of the war, the American Battle Monuments Commission, chaired by George C. Marshall, established a policy to use American sculptors at the Omaha Beach Memorial in Normandy, France, where American soldiers were honored.  De Lue’s war monument was his most significant, designed in 1949 and finally installed in 1955.  The twenty-two foot bronze sculpture called Spirit of American Youth Rising From the Waves occupies the centerpiece and was complimented by conservative art critic Thomas Craven as possibly “the most inspired memorial ever created by an American sculptor”3 The architectural monument also includes De Lue’s America and France as nine-foot granite figures, guardian forms that protect the ends of the monument. Whether De Lue’s work was life-size or monumental in scale, its heroic quality of motion and gesture appears to defy gravity in figures that leap, thrust, cavort, or fly, with movement that gives the appearance of the sculpture levitating from its base.  At a time in the history of art in the 20th century when the tenants of modernist sculpture in the academic tradition were challenged by abstraction, public sculpture fought for recognition in the realm of “the new.”  De Lue introduced in his art evidence of his constant awareness of the modern era in which he worked.  Implied motion rather than static emotion suffuses his sculpture throughout his career.  His inspiration of upward mobility suggests an outreach toward a better world, place, or idea-the future. The Lore Degenstein Gallery could not have a more representative art form that illustrates our own academic principles, singling out the tenet of excellence as a goal towards achievement for our students.  Our sincere appreciation goes to Chiles Gallery in Boston for their generosity in giving us the opportunity to exhibit the elegant sculptures of Donald De Lue.  I would also like to offer special thanks to Roger Howlett, Director of Childs Gallery and organizer of the De Lue collection, for his gracious assistance in making this exhibition possible at Susquehanna University.  We also thank the Charles B. Degenstein Endowment for its continued support of our exhibition program.   Dr. Valerie Livingston   1 D. Roger Howlett.  The Sculpture of Donald De Lue: Gods, Prophets, and Heroes.  Boston, 1990, 11.  The standard text for this artist, Howlett’s discussion of the sculpture includes many of the works in the exhibition as well as photographs of the artist, illustrated in color.  Howlett provides an extensive account of De Lue’s career and vast oeuvre. 2 Howlett, 67. 3 Howlett, 79. Cosmic Head, Donald De Lue, gilded bronze, 1943, 32"