1931-2010
A Nantucket summer resident and AAN artist member, Elliot Offner was born in Brooklyn in 1931. Offner studied at Cooper Union and then at Yale University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1953 and a Master of Fine arts in 1959. He subsequently received many awards and honors, was the subject of over twenty solo exhibitions since 1964, received extensive commission work, and was represented by many prestigious public collections.
From 1974–2008, Offner held the position of Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he imparted to his students his love for the craft of sculpture, his medium of choice. Offner was a master of bronze casting, the graceful motion of his works having been compared to the work of the great American sculptor Paul Manship.
“I create sculpture that is reverential and evokes a sense of grandness and beauty and spirituality through art that speaks of nature, but is not nature.”