One of the 11 limestone reliefs making up Birds and Animals of the Northwest (1937), Gilbertson's sculpture at the United States post office in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
Boris Gilbertson (1907–1982) was an American sculptor.[1]
Early years
Gilbertson was born in
Evanston, Illinois in 1907 to a Norwegian-Russian family and spent much of his childhood with his grandparents outside Chicago, Illinois. He began studies in
physics at the
University of Chicago but soon switched to art and enrolled at this
School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He married Genevieve Van Metre and they made their home in Bayfield County, Wisconsin.[2]
Wild Ducks (1940), four-panel aluminum relief created for the New Deal post office in Janesville, Wisconsin. Installed vertically as a single unit at the original location, the panels now hang individually at the newer Janesville post office building.[3]
Much of Gilbertson's work consisted of sculpted
reliefs that were commissions for public buildings, including post office buildings, courthouses and government buildings. Consequently, many are part of the General Services Administration collection and have been transferred to the holdings of the
Smithsonian American Art Museum and
National Gallery of Art.[4] His most famous work may be his reliefs in the interior of the
Department of the Interior's
Main Interior Building in Washington DC.