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William King

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William King. 1952. Photographic print. Archives of Maine Art, Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Colby College Libraries, Waterville, Maine.

William (Bill) King was born in 1925 in Jacksonville, Florida, and grew up in Coconut Grove, Florida. After attending the University of Florida from 1942 to 1944, King realized that engineering, his father’s career, was not the path meant for him. His mother, who was all too aware,  gave him 100 dollars and said: “Get out of this state and don’t come back until you’re 65; there is nothing here for you” (Weber). Shortly after leaving the University of Florida, King moved to New York City to attend Cooper Union, where he studied alongside Ashley Bryan. In 1948, the same year he graduated from Cooper Union, King received a scholarship to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 1949, King received a Fulbright grant to study in Rome at the Accademia di Belle Arti and learned to better utilize the medium of terracotta; in 1952, he also studied at the Central School in London. That same year, King was the first of the Skowhegan Students to be selected to paint a fresco in the South Solon Meeting House. King began his teaching career in 1953, holding positions at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, the University of California at Berkeley, the Art Students League, the University of Pennsylvania, and the State University of New York. King became famous for his sculptures in a range of materials of “long-legged, lanky male figures [that] explore human foible and pose” (SAAM). At his death in 2015, King left a vast collection of sculptures that comically poke at the daily lives of humans, their fashions, and their politics.

—Carter Dexter