Winged Horse

<p>Chicago artist John Storrs spent most of his career in France but retained ties to his native city. His <em>Winged Horse</em> was executed in Paris and demonstrates his adoption of French modernist abstraction and geometric simplification. The design’s impetus, however, was American: Storrs conceived the work as a model for a large-scale monument to honor one of his idols, the poet Walt Whitman. The artist wrote that Whitman “stands practically alone as one who has discovered a national soul and has given it expression in a form that can be called beautiful—that can be called art.” Regrettably, Storrs never found financial backing for his project.</p>