Robert Lee Dean
Ike Statue Sculptor

Robert Lee Dean, Jr. was born October 13, 1929, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Dean has completed three statues of Dwight D. Eisenhower: one is displayed in Denison, Texas, the President's birthplace, the second on the grounds of the U.S. Military Academy and the third on the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in London. His other major works include two statues of General Douglas MacArthur and one of General George S. Patton. His portrait sculpture works include those of Vince Lombardi, Helen Keller, and Will Rogers.

The Man and the Statue

After graduation from Oklahoma Military Academy and Oklahoma University, Dean was accepted at the United States Military Academy. As a result, he became the first sculptor-alumnus in West Point's history.He graduated from West Point in 1953 went into the Air Force as a pilot for four years. After that he went to work for a Wall Street Investment banking concern. During his two years there he soaked up so much Latin finance that he moved to Mexico City in 1959.

Because of his Spanish he found a ready market for his talents at a private financial consultant and banker and seemed fixed in high finance for a lifetime. He edited and published Mexico's largest financial newsletter, "Mexletter," and played the piano in his spare time. He studied classical piano as a child, but after turning to jazz uncovered a special talent for improvisation and interpretation. He gave concerts regularly, and in 1964, Successos, Mexico's biggest weekly news magazine, called him the country's best jazz musician.

He visited a lot of galleries and museums in and around Mexico City with his wife and discovered that his favorite art from was sculpture. Because of that, his wife, more as a joke than anything else, gave him a lump of clay on his 35th birthday. And that was when it started. Surprisingly, dean said he found himself toying with the clay, shaping it into various forms. It was so fascinating that he decided to take a few lessons.

He went first-class and signed for night classes with the great Mexican sculptor, Ignacio Asunsolo, in the Academy of San Carlos. Though Dean "didn't exactly ignore his banking business, his sculpting soon became more than a diversion. "It was my full time hobby, then my all-consuming passion and then a career," Dean recalls. Asunsolo was so pleased with Dean's progress that one of his abstract pieces was entered in the Biennial show at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City. It won a prize for creativity, and thus a career was born. Sculptors and critics continued to praise this newcomer and he moved from free form work into portrait sculpture and "knew I had found my niche."

To soften the blow for his family, Dean flew them to Europe that summer, and while they enjoyed the scenery and new places, he soaked up sculpture in all the major art capitals.

Bob Dean then made another decision: he would move his family to Europe. He had decided that was where he could study and work best. In 1966, the Deans moved to Florence, Italy, and rented a dozen rooms in a Medieval castle perched atop a mountain along the Arno River, 15 minutes from the city. They arrived only six weeks before the disastrous floods that destroyed many of Florence's priceless art treasures.

"The Arno flooded and washed out our road to the castle, and the devastation was sickening. But we loved the city and our new life there. We had planned to stay only nine months, but we were there 2 1/2 years." In Florence he founded and was first president of the American Society, a cultural and educational organization for the city's American residents - of which there are several thousand.

His first monumental sculpture, a portrait of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commissioned in 1966, was completed in Florence and dedicated Sept. 15 1969 at Texas Military Institute in San Antonio. MacArthur attended TMI as a youth, and the 14-foot statue occupies a prominent place on the school campus.

Dean's studio the summer of 1969 was a room in his parent's garage in Denison. There he completed the first three-foot-high oil clay model of Eisenhower. "Ike" took just over a month. Dean said, compared to a year before he was satisfied with a working model for the MacArthur statue. The sculptor completed a larger working model in clay when on his return to Florence that year, and the finished product was cast in Italy. Dean supervised the casting since, like most sculptors, he has a knowledge of this auxiliary skill. Before he moved to Italy, Dean cast a monumental Abraham Lincoln statue in Mexico City.

Dean's Eisenhower stands in the short, snug-fitting jacket that was named for him and baggy wool pants that sag over his shoes. His hands are on his hips and he wears a slight smile. Dean modeled the general - President to look as he did in 1945. In addition to sculpting tools, Dean has utilized a borrowed Air Force jacket, wool "pinks" from Texas A&M, a mirror and a model, Bob Dean. "Why shouldn't I be the model," he asked. "I'm always available and I'm cheap. He put on the borrowed jacket and the faded pink pants and stood in front of the mirror, shifting arms and legs, gradually finding the stance of the clay man on the work table to his left.

Making three models in graduated sizes gives the sculptor needed practice with the body and head, Dean said. He noted that getting Ike's smile the way he wanted was perhaps his toughest job. "Big smiles don't wear well," Dean said. "It sounds OK, but for some reason they look `frozen' and audiences soon get tired of laughing statues."

Since Dean's "historical" sculpture figures are dead (as usually is the case), he worked from photographs. He studied a thousand pictures in the photographic library at the Pentagon and picked a World War II-vintage, slightly smudged and fuzzy photo of Ike stepping from a staff car. "That is my favorite and it has probably influenced my statue more than any of the others," he said. He explained that clear, detailed photographs aren't as valuable to a sculptor as "a simple picture that reduces the man to his essential image." But the final product is totally realistic, completely representative. "I want people to look at my statue and say `that's Ike.'"

Dean recalled having seen Eisenhower "from a distance" several times. He was a West Point cadet in Eisenhower's inaugural parade and marched past where the 34th President stood "but didn't pay too much attention." "If I'd known I sure would have looked closer at the old boy," Dean said. "A look is worth a thousand photographs."

Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site
609 South Lamar
Denison, TX 75021
(903) 465-8908 · Fax: (903) 465-8988
e-mail: birthplace@glassportal.net