Here are 4 modern art works based on the California condor. All of the images come from magazines or books.
Sculptor Del Filardi’s “California Condor” is approximately life size. Fabricated from steel, this piece is part of her series of endangered bird sculptures:
Charles Harper produced a “memorial portfolio” of 5 extinct and 6 endangered American birds. His image of the California condor includes a hatchling below the adult:
Harper’s caption notes that:
… the California Condor works at preserving our country’s fragrance, while utilizing the dead in the cycle of life.
The memorial portfolio by Harper was published in a little magazine offered to customers of the Ford Motor Company:
My copy of this magazine is stamped:
Compliments of
Schaffer’s Garage
Millersburg, Pa.
Phone 101
Ralph Steadman recently published a substantial collection of images of real and imagined birds that are “next in line for extinction” or, as he puts it, “nextinction”. The book includes serious and humorous commentary, and – all together – is a powerful call for efforts to save bird species from extinction. Here is Steadman’s California condor:
My favorite of the works here is by Andy Warhol:
The above is one of 16 prints of endangered animals by Warhol published in a 1986 collection. This book includes text by Kurt Benirschke, a former research director at the San Diego Zoo. Warhol’s dark image and Benirschke’s associated text reflect the sense of crisis at a time when the outlook for the California condor was so bleak.
Zeifer, Ellen. Del Filardi: sculpture takes flight. American Artist. June 1978.
Harper, Charles. America’s vanishing birds. Ford Times. November 1957.
Steadman, Ralph, and Ceri Levy. Ralph Steadman’s nextinction. Bloomsbury. 2015.
Benirschke, Kurt. Vanishing animals. Springer. 1986.
Pseudogryps 