Born in New York City, Seymour Lipton became one of the modern-art innovators for direct metal sculpture, breaking away from the traditional methods of creating bronze sculpture from complex casting processes. With Abstract Expressionist style, he created a method of working in sheet metal brazed with bronze or nickel silver, flexible but solid looking material that allowed him freely to cut and weld basic shapes. A rust-proof alloy, it was called Monel.

His themes, many of them having to do with bird subjects of flight and confinement and those issues relative to the American working class, paralleled the Abstract Expressionist movement in American painting. Of this themes, he said: ""For me, experiences of movement, flight, strengt...