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ERNEST TROVA
(American, born 1927)
Profile Canto 5-3, 1976
Stainless steel
144 x 84 x 48”
Gift of James N. Gray Company to the University of Kentucky Art Department, by transfer to the University of Kentucky Art Museum 2000.13

In the early 1960s, St. Louis Sculptor Ernest Trova—who was entirely self-taught—began developing his pivotal theme of Falling Man, a stark and startling image that combines references to classical sculpture with an industrial aesthetic. In his Profile Canto series, Falling Man—depicted as an androgynous, mechanical figure—is folded and segmented as to be nearly undetectable amid the various geometric forms that comprise these works. As the viewer moves around Profile Canto 5-3, shapes shift and realign to reveal an upside-down silhouette profile of Falling Man. Profile Canto is the artist’s invitation to the viewer to undertake our journey, both a physical tour as we walk around the work as well as an intellectual voyage as we sway between seeing abstract shapes to sensing Falling Man. As Trova noted, “as man moves from one position to the next in an eventual fall to inevitable oblivion, what becomes most important is the journey, not the destination.”