"I create sculpture that is reverential and evokes a sense of grandness and beauty and spirituality through art that speaks of nature, but is not nature." _Elliot Offner
Born in Brooklyn in 1931, Elliot Offner studied at Cooper Union and then at Yale University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1953 and a Master of Fine Arts in 1959. From 1974 until his passing in 2010, Offner held the position of Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he taught his students a love for the craft of sculpture. Elliot Offner is considered a master of bronze casting, and the graceful motion of his Art has been compared to the great American sculptor Paul Manship.
During his lifetime, Elliot Offner was granted twenty-four solo exhibitions and completed fifteen important public commissions in the United States and abroad. He was the recipient of many awards and honors from institutions that include the Ford Foundation, National Academy of Design, National Council on the Arts and Humanities, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. From 1997-2010, Offner served as the Vice President of the National Sculpture Society and received the NSS Medal of Honor in 2007. Works by Elliot Offner are represented in many prominent public collections that include the Boston Public Library (MA), British Museum (London), Brooklyn Museum (NY), Cooper-Hewitt Museum (NY), DeCordova Museum (Lincoln, MA), Detroit Institute of Art (MI), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), Smith College Museum of Art (Northampton, MA), and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).