Houston sculptor and painter David Pryor Adickes died on Sunday, July 13 at age 98, leaving a legacy of nearly eight decades of artmaking that included many notable monumental public sculptures and signature paintings. Mr. Adickes may have cut a diminutive figure — at 105 pounds he was once deemed too slight to enlist as a World War II Army pilot — but he became a giant of Texas art over his long lifetime.

Mr. Adickes was born in Huntsville in 1927, and lived there through graduating with a degree in math and physics from Sam Houston State University (SHSU), before decamping to Paris in 1948. There he studied the art of El Greco, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Marc Chagall. In a 2017 Texas Country Reporter story, Mr. Adickes quot...