Biography

In 1925, the Hollywood newspaper The Daily Citizen praised the thirteen-year-old Everett DuPen, calling him “the genius among us.” At his death at ninety-two he was an elder and Fellow of the National Sculpture Society and the National Academy of Design. In the years between, he had a remarkable career as a sculptor and teacher spanning eight decades.

DuPen began his formal art studies at USC in 1932, later transferring to Yale and graduating in 1937. He studied architecture at Harvard and spent a year with the masters at the American Academy in Rome; later leaves took him to learn bronze casting in Florence and to study art across India, Nepal, and Egypt.

He married the ballet dancer Charlotte Nicks in 1939 and, after teaching at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, settled into a thirty-eight-year career at the University of Washington — where he played a major role in building the Sculpture Division into a nationally and internationally known program, and was equally known for his life-drawing classes. Most celebrated for his figurative pieces in terra cotta, stone, wood, and bronze, he was a friend and mentor to generations of artists.

His sculpture can be found in many public parks and buildings, as well as in museums and private collections — among them the DuPen Fountain at the Seattle Center and the fountain at the Joel Pritchard Building at the Washington State Capitol.