Although best remembered as a sculptor, Theodore Roszak was first an accomplished painter. A trip to Europe from 1929 to 1930 introduced him to Surrealism, Cubism, and Constructivism, and he experimented with all three in his paintings. In the late 1930s, he worked with the Bauhaus artist Lázlô Moholy-Nagy at the New York Design Laboratory...This sculpture is fabricated from sections of commercial steel rods and pipes, as well as machined, cut, and bent steel stock...The title, Sentinel, signals his familiarity with Freudian and Jungian psychology. It also foretells the direction his art would take following the devastation of the war: the creation of somber and emotional images meant to stand guard over mankind's darkest impulses.

from Snite Museum of Art, Selected Works: Snite Museum of Art (Notre Dame, 2005)