NEW YORK.- Avant-garde sculptor Philip Pavia, 94, died at New York University Medical Center. Philip Pavia was a pioneer in modern abstract sculpture. He was also an outspoken avant-garde thinker. He was best known for his work "The Ides of March," which was displayed outside the New York Hilton on Sixth Avenue for more than twenty years. He also had large-scale works displayed at the Cooper-Hewitt and the Guhhenheim museums.

Pavia joined in the avant-garde movement that took place in Manhattan in the 1940s and 1950s, together with Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman and Robert Motherwell. Pacia also published a magazine titled It Is.

Pavia studied at Yale and then left for the Art Students League in New York. Later he went to live in Paris and became a friend of Henry Miller. A month ago three sections of "The Ides of March" disappeared.