Metalfor

Metalfor

Bret Price, 1983

Metalfor by Bret Price is located in Civic Center Park.

In 1986, Warren Hancock, a Newport Beach art collector, donated Metalfor to the City of Newport Beach. The value of the piece when it was donated to the City was $15,000.

Created by Bret Price, Metalfor was originally placed outside the Newport Beach City Hall for part of 1986 and 1987, until it was moved to the front of the Newport Center Library. When the Newport Center Library closed in 1994, the City relocated Metalfor to a grassy area beneath a bluff on the east side of the intersection of Superior Avenue and West Coast Highway. The royal blue painted steel abstract work, which weighs 1,400 ponds and is 8 1/2 feet tall, was the centerpiece of the 22nd annual Newport Beach City Art Festival in 1986. Intense heating of the metal to make it malleable created its curvilinear form. The steel was repeatedly bent and rolled during this period of elasticity to give it “a sense of softness (and an) illusion of flexibility,” sculptor Price expleained. The statue will be relocated.