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[email protected] NEWS FROM THE GETTY DATE: April 23, 2007 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE A LIFETIME PASSION BECOMES A PUBLIC LEGACY Fran and Ray Stark’s Collection of Modern Outdoor Sculpture Finds a New Home at the Getty Center LOS ANGELES—When legendary film producer Ray Stark died in January 2004, he left behind not only an impressive showcase of cinematic treasures, but also a lifetime’s bequest of art. Together with Fran Stark, his wife of 53 years, who died in 1992, Stark assembled a formidable group of modern works, including one of the best private collections of sculpture. The couple’s love of art will now become a public legacy, when 28 pieces of modern sculpture from their collection move to their new home at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, thanks to the generosity of Fran and Ray Stark through The Ray Stark Revocable Trust. Fran and Ray found joy in painting, as well as sculpture. His favorite artist was Henry Moore, who he thought “had a wonderful sense of humanity.” The Starks’ tastes tended towards figurative works and their collection is filled with solid examples of the human form captured in various studies, from Moore’s robust Draped Reclining Mother and Baby, to Aristide Maillol’s sensuous Torse de Dina, and Alberto Giacometti’s elongated, thin, and angular Standing Woman I. The collection also features figures of animals, and more abstract works including Ellsworth Kelly’s Untitled, which pierces the sky with its towering strength; Roy Lichtenstein’s Three Brushstrokes, a freeze frame of three swaths of color seemingly painted in mid-air; and Alexander Calder’s The Jousters with its playful connection of shapes and forms.