This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 9, 2009 - Ernest Trova, whose “Falling Man” sculptures became shiny projections of the facelessness and ennui of American life in the 1960s, died at home in Richmond Heights on Sunday night. He was 82 and had suffered from heart disease.
Mr. Trova was born and reared in St. Louis, and as a native and lifelong dweller here, it is interesting to note that he never learned to drive an automobile, and indeed preferred to walk rather than to travel by car.
When it became necessary for him to travel more than walkable distances, the duty passed to friends and relatives, but primarily to his wife, the late Carla Rand Trova, an artist herself and a woman of great style, beauty and wit. Mrs. Trova died in June 2008, and her death affected Mr. Trova profoundly.
His father was an engineer, and mechanical things fascinated Mr. Trova, although not so much that they would have directed him to follow in his father’s footsteps.
His interests lay in design and in art, in poetry and irony, and he blended all this together, often to great effect. For example, the Falling Man, which what was in public spaces and museum galleries an unreadable, androgenic creature, became a more personal, more accessible figure when it appeared on the faces of watches and as the main element of magical kaleidoscopes. He collected all sorts of things, including Mickey Mouse memorabilia.
He had a special regard for poetry and poets, carrying on a correspondence with Ezra Pound when Pound was locked up in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington by the U.S. government for his pro-Italian fascist sentiments during World War II.
In response to a letter from Trova about painting, Pound wrote this back to him:
"No don't forget painting/ eat it, sleep it, walk it, drink it, in fact almost ANYthing but talk it, 24 hours per day."
Ernest Tino Trova was born in Clayton and attended St. Louis University High School and Clayton High. He worked as a department store window dresser, and an early and devoted patron of his was the late Morton D. May, a merchant prince and voracious art collector. May's family's company owned the old Famous-Barr chain, and other department stores around the U.S. Mr. Trova also worked as a decorator and once as a building super. He said that work provided him opportunities to collect cast-off stuff he could use in his art.
With May’s wind in his sails, and with the devoted encouragement of his wife, who was called Teddy, Mr. Trova’s star began to shine as well.
He put down a strong artistic foundation. He was inspired by the abstract expressionists, and for a while made paintings while musicians played jazz at the Landesmans’ Crystal Palace saloon in Gaslight Square.
Besides paintings and drawings and sculptures, and later on, those watches and kaleidoscopes, Mr. Trova also designed a suit, which was very stylish and – worn by the redoubtable Jay Landesman, one of Gaslight Square's brightest stars – created a stir at a Trova opening in New York
In the middle of the 20th century, Mr. Trova became as celebrated as any St. Louis artist had ever been, and his celebrity extended beyond the U.S. In 1947, he took first place in the Missouri Show at the St. Louis Art Museum with a provocative assemblage called “Roman Boy.”
Local critics, then as now resistant to creativity, were confounded by the genuinely new. The ever-ready-to-be-titillated public was either scandalized or energized by this strange, sexually graphic work. Nevertheless, “Roman Boy” got its picture in “Life” magazine, assuring a rare degree of celebrity for the St. Louis-based artist.
In an interview with the late Post-Dispatch writer and editor William F. Woo in 1964, Trova said, "To paint a picture you don't have to have anybody tell you what to do. There's a combination to how people work. Half of it is instinct, and half of it is the things you've acquired along the way."
The “Falling Man” took him to the pinnacle of his success, but, artists being who and what they are, he moved away from the organicism of that totemic figure toward a more geometric style.
In the mid-1970s, with the encourage of another patron, the late banker and collector Adam Aronson and his wife, Dr. Judith Aronson, Trova donated a number of works of art to Laumeier Park in St. Louis County, and from that gift grew the sculpture park that is highly regarded today.
Until fairly recently, he continued to work in his studio, which is next door to his house, and he had shown work in recent years at the Bruno David Gallery in Grand Center.
In an interview with this writer in 1996, he said, "I spend my time here working. I've had shows all the way through, from that time until now. I have to do what I have to do ... but that doesn't mean that I'm not interested in things that are fun."
He wore his celebrity and his success lightly. He was a kindly, friendly, rather courtly man, with gracious manners.
He was exquisitely groomed when he went out, as he often did until recent years, and he would have been a ringer for a suburban stockbroker or lawyer, had it not been for his signature round spectacles. Once, in a self-portrait, their lenses became the stage for a continuous whirl of Falling Men.
Mr. Trova is survived by two daughters, Tristan Rivas, of Rochester, Minn., and Carla Hassell of Colorado Springs, Colo., and by his son, Tino Trova, of St. Louis.
There was no memorial service at the request of the deceased. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Contemporary Art Museum or White Flag Projects.