Original Chuck Dodson Erotic Figurative Sculpture circa 1975, "Penetration"

Original Chuck Dodson Erotic Figurative Sculpture circa 1975

Offered for sale is an erotic figurative sculpture titled "Penetration" by Florida architect turned sculptor Chuck Dodson (1908 – 1993). The artist was a sculptor who was a resident artist at the Grove House in Coconut Grove, FL. He earned much national attention after being featured in Playboy Magazine in the 1970s. His sculptures were predominantly of female nudes and erotica. Chuck Dodson was known as one of the more colorful artists in the Miami area whose work was often erotic in nature. He did numerous public works in Miami.

Dodson was born in Kansas City, Mo., and moved to Chicago to study architectural engineering at Armour Institute. But Dodson loved the sea and boating; in fact, he won the first powerboat race held from Albany, N.Y., to Manhattan in 1929.

Then he joined the Navy and was stationed at the Dupont Plaza in downtown Miami when that building housed the Naval headquarters. He also spent some time in a station in Key West and then did convoy duty in the North Atlantic during World War II. He was on a destroyer, and on an escort ship, protecting troops, munitions and supplies being sent to Europe in convoys.

After the war, at age 42, Dodson attended art school in Paris, London, Madrid and Rome. He traveled to North Africa, Cuba and Mexico, ending up in South Florida in 1956 with his wife, three sons, and a daughter.

He knew the area from World War II days when they were building a lot of hotels on Miami Beach, and he painted a lot of murals. He did murals in numerous hotels in Miami Beach, including one in the old Boom Boom room at the Fontainebleau.
Dodson also sculpted the statues at the entrance to the Casablanca Hotel on Collins Avenue and created the mosaics on the front of the Orange Bowl and the Barnett Bank building in Miami Beach. For a mosaic he did at the B.G.F. office building -- which later became the Beber, Silverstein & Partners advertising office at Five Points in Coral Gables -- Dodson won the "Craftsman of the Year" award in 1969 from the Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects.