Spero Anargyros (1915 - 2004) was a prominent local and international sculptor. In the Greater Bay Area, he is primarily known as the creator of the bronze bust of former San Francisco Mayor George Moscone which still graces the City Hall rotunda; the imposing 21-ton granite seal of the City and County of San Francisco atop the San Francisco Hall of Justice Building; and restorations of the 23-foot-tall neoclassical figures for the Palace of Fine Arts.
While Anargyros earned his living and established his reputation internationally as a sculptor of large public art commissions, he indulged himself from time to time by creating portraits of family, friends, and public figures who he admired.
Most of the pieces exhibited in “Primarily Portraits” were sculpted in clay and finished in cast bronze using the classic lost-wax technology. Some were cast in plaster, then painted to simulate a cast-bronze patina.
A New York native born of Greek immigrants, Anargyros moved to San Francisco in the 1950s, lived on the Peninsula with his wife Maria, and maintained studios on Clay Street in San Francisco and in Puerta Vallarta.
Steve Rubenstein quoted Anargyros in the S.F. Chronicle (2004):
“It turns out I’m very radical, because I do things people recognize.”
