From 3 March to 28 May 2020
Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, 27 rue de Seine, Paris 6e
Metcalf was born in New York. His parents were both stained-glass artists, who notably contributed to the windows of the Cathedral of St John the Divine. Metcalf took up art and sculpture as a teenager. At 18 he enlisted in the US Army’s 88th Infantry Division, nicknamed the Blue Devils. Metcalf fought in northern Italy during the Second World War and lost three fingers in combat at the Furlo Pass.
Metcalf attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, then enrolled at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. He received a grant to study ancient metalworking and moved to Deià, Mallorca, in 1953. He befriended the writer Robert Graves and collaborated with him on his book Adam’s Rib, published in 1955. Metcalf lived in Paris from 1956 to 1965, where he had his studio in the Impasse Ronsin.
By 1965 Metcalf was an accomplished sculptor, with a studio on Spring Street in SoHo. However, he had grown tired of contemporary art and moved to Mexico. He befriended eminent writers and artists, among them Carlos Fuentes and Carlos Pellicer, and was the first to introduce Octavio Paz to Marcel Duchamp. Metcalf won the commission to forge the Olympic torch for the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. He was married to the Mexican actress Pilar Pellicer, his third wife, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. Metcalf later married Pilar Pellicer’s younger sister, the sculptor Ana Pellicer, his fourth wife.
Metcalf opened a studio and forge in 1967, where he taught artisans how to make vessels with a thick rim known as el borde grueso. In 1973 Metcalf and Ana Pellicer founded the Casa de Artesanías and a school, which would become known as the Adolfo Best Maugard School of Arts and Crafts, in Santa Clara del Cobre, to promote indigenous artists and pre-Columbian coppersmithing and forging techniques. Their work has been credited with preserving the region’s metalworking.
Metcalf died in Santa Clara del Cobre, Michoacán, on 27 January 2012, aged 86, survived by his wife, Ana Pellicer. He was buried in Santa Clara del Cobre, near several of his sculptures.