Victor Riu, Rhythm

Graceful swirls roll through space, rising, expanding, and recoiling. Victor Riu is known for his extraordinary ability to carve luscious forms in black granite, an extremely dense igneous rock that most sculptors consider impossible to work with. Classically trained Italian stone carvers, Riu and his brothers emigrated to the United States and founded a business carving gravestones in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania. Riu also worked as a fine artist, and the majority of his sculptures are made out of Coopersburg granite that he and his family quarried. Riu's Resurgent Harmony (1957) is well known to Philadelphians, as it ornaments the exterior of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts on Broad Street.