His anonymity has allowed two of his major works to be demolished: the Bank of Hawaii Building in Honolulu, razed in around 1967 to make way for a new bank building; and the Wichita Institute of Art, covered over during the 1960s in an expansion of the Institute's facilities. It is unknown whether anything remains of these glorious works.

The art of Rockefeller Center presents us with an ultimate irony. On one hand, Diego Rivera has attained fame of mythic proportions for his work on Rockefeller Center . Rivera, like all of the other artists whose work graces Rockefeller Center, was commissioned to do a job, for money, to create a work of art for the Rockefeller family. As a daring Communist, Rivera's independence led him to populate his mural with the likenesses of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky. At what was intended to be a shrine to capitalism and rugged individualism, Rivera dared to incite the revolution. Not wanting to sponsor that, Nelson Rockefeller had his work demolished using sledgehammers. So it was big news and it made the husband of Frida Khalo even more famous.

On the other hand, Lawrie, the shy and retiring immigrant sculptor, working less than a fifty yards away, (quietly and obediently doing what he was hired to do) shaped and colored the God-like figure of Wisdom. And he created more than a dozen more works around the Center that remain to this day. So the Rivera got the fame, and Lawrie, the shy hero, was barely noticed.

Go into any bookstore and find one on sculpture, or American artists. Chances are you won't find his name anywhere in most art books. His works between the wars are some of the most stunning examples of Art Deco that exist in America .

He was also famous for designing a number of commemorative and military medals. ostage stamps have featured some of his work, but not mentioned his name.

 

These are the reasons I want to promote, publicize, and evangelize this most remarkable yet largely unknown genius.

 

History owes him this much.

Left: The Screen of Man, etc. at Rockefeller Center.

His works are international in scope: He worked all over the United States, and had works installed from Honolulu, Hawaii to the Brittany Military War Memorial in France .

Long before the advent of the Internet, fax machines, cell phones, or email, Lawrie managed to direct and supervise multiple commissions all over the country, using the technology of the day, telephones, telegrams and locomotives to accomplish his goals.

His career spanned from the Victorian age until the Space Age. His career began as an apprentice to enlarging plaster sculptures for Chicago's Columbian Exhibition of 1893, and his last sculpture, completed around 1962, adorns a cadet library at West Point.

Millions of people pass by his works each year, but almost no one knows who he was.

His largest collective body of work resides not in the artistic capitals of New York City, Washington, or Los Angeles, but rather, at the Nebraska State Capitol Building in Lincoln, Nebraska.

The mere fact that it exists in Nebraska is nothing short of miraculous. At the time the Nebraska State Capitol Building was built, it was a small city of only around a hundred thousand inhabitants, dead center in the continent.

Below, figures of "Wisdom, Justice, Power and Mercy, Constant Guardians of the Law"from the Negraska State Capitol Building.