The Builders

For the monumental federal building in Kansas City, Costantino Nivola created a series of sculpted relief panels in cast concrete that celebrate the civic spirit of America.  Titled The Builders, the artwork’s roughly textured imagery depicts the achievements of a heroic society.  Nivola combined complex and semi-abstract shapes that suggest totemic human and architectural forms with the clearly recognizable outlines of many types of tools—such as hammers, wrenches, pliers, shovels, trowels and ropes—all of which are cast from life.  Nivola used a novel technique of sculpting his forms in wet sand to create a mold, into which he poured concrete or plaster to cast the finished artworks.  Nivola once wrote: “The fact that concrete is the number one building material today (as stone was in the past) makes concrete a logical material to be used for sculpture in an architectural context.”

The son of a Sardinian stonecutter, Nivola specialized in architectural reliefs, sculpture and graphic design.  In 1939, fleeing the oppressive political climate in Italy on the eve of World War II, he arrived in New York City at the age of 28 with his wife, Ruth.  The family relocated to East Hampton, on Long Island, in 1948.  Over a long and prolific career, Nivola completed many public commissions, including The Builders in Kansas City.  He once explained in an interview that “a work designed for a public space is less a work of art than a civic act…it concerns the ways in which we live together, and in which we influence each other.”