George Segal

George Segal was an art student and chicken breeder

Geoge Segal was born in New York on 26 November 1924. His parents were Polish Jews who had immigrated from Eastern Europe and initially ran a butcher’s shop in the New York Bronx. They later took over a poultry farm in the New Jersey countryside, where Geoge Segal spent his childhood. His art teacher at Stuyvesant High School in New York awakened his interest in painting and museums which eventually led to art courses at the New York Pratt Institute, the Cooper Union School of Art and lastly the New York University from where he graduated with a diploma in 1949. Whilst studying, he continued to work for years at his parents’ chicken farm. In 1946, he married Helen Steinberg (died 2014) and acquired a further poultry farm in South Brunswick, New Jersey where he held annual picnics for his friends from the New York art scene.

Plaster ghosts with real everyday objects

George Segel had contacts and friends with many art professors at nearby Rutgers University and introduced them to the composer John Cage (1912-1992), in whose famous courses for experimental composition he also took part. In the spring of 1957, Segal staged many avantgarde performances, known as Happenings since Allan Kaprow (1927-2006). In the wake of the emerging Pop Art, Segal’s initial attempts in the field of painting gave way to work with plastic plaster figures which he usually furnished with real everyday objects and arranged in dynamic poses. He later moved on to making impressions from real bodies, sawing them up and reassembling them into new figures as he saw fit. The economical use of colour and details lent the sculptures an unreal, ghostly appearance. The artist was interested in the psychology behind people and their actions, and his approach was extremely innovative and unorthodox for the time. For the body shapes he used bandages dipped in plaster which he applied to his models.

Exhibition success, awards and cinematic portraits 

George Segal took part in documenta 4 in 1968 and documenta 6 in 1977. He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1979, belonged to the American Academy of Arts and Letters from 1981, and was accepted into the National Academy of Design in 1999. John Lennon (1940-1980) and Yoko Ono (born 1933) showed Segal’s feet in their film Up Your Legs Forever (1971), and Michael Blackwood (1934-2023) filmed the documentary George Segal in 1980 with regards to the bronze sculpture Abraham and Isaac, which was originally planned as a memorial for the Kent State Massacre of 4th May 1970. A further television documentary about the life of the artist was shown in 2021. George Segal received prizes and awards for his artistic creativity, including the international Japanese art prize Praemium Imperiale in 1997 and the National Medal of Arts in 1999.

Geoge Segal died in New Brunswick on 9 June 2000. Since his death, his widow Helen has looked after her husband’s legacy with the George and Helen Segal Foundation.