Interviewer(s): Leigh Cutler

Project: University of Houston

David Adickes is a Houston artist who was born in Huntsville, Texas on January 19, 1927. In World War II, he was in the Army Air Corps (Air Force), flying back and forth between the U.S and France. After the war, in 1948, he received a bachelor's degree in math and physics from Sam Houston State Teacher's College (now called Sam Houston State University). From his trips to Paris during the war, he became interested in art as a profession. After college, he returned to that city for two years to study art with Fernand Leger, one of the masters of modern French painting. This experience launched his career as a professional artist. He started out as a painter and eventually added small bronze statuettes to his repertoire. Today he is best known for his large scale outdoor concrete sculptures.

Adickes settled permanently in Houston in mid- 1960s. It wasn't until the early 1980s, when banker and businessman Joe Russo asked him to create a piece of sculpture for the outdoor plaza of his downtown building, that Adickes turned to larger than life artwork. From his Houston studio, "SculpturWorx", he has been focused on this medium ever since that commission.