Abstarcta

American sculpture began developing along more abstract lines during the 1930s when artists came in contact with contemporary European work, either directly or through photographs. Alexander Calder, for example, was inspired by the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian to make abstract sculpture and paint it in pure colors. Calder became internationally famous for his "mobiles," or moving works, and "stabiles," which are stationary.

David Smith saw pictures of welded sculpture by Picasso and the Spanish artist Julio González and created welded steel works such as Hudson River Landscape (1951, Whitney Museum, New York City). His Cubi series, such as Cubi I (1963, Detroit Institute of Arts), comprises large-scale works inspired by cubism; they show Smith's manner of polishing and then abrading the stainless steel surface with an allover calligraphic design to reflect light. In the 1930s Joseph Cornell came under the influence of surrealist art and developed his 3-dimensional, painted, shadow-box sculptures, mysterious assemblages of heterogeneous objects.

In contrast to these are Louise Nevelson's assemblages-large, monochromatic, abstract constructions that are frequently designed to form wall environments. They are made of utilitarian objects-typically, discarded fragments of furniture-contained within boxlike wooden frames. Isamu Noguchi's elegantly simple works combine European abstraction with traditional Japanese forms. Reuben Nakian, who turned from a figurative to a quasi-abstract style in the 1940s, worked both in metals and terracotta, basing his sculptures largely on mythological subjects. Other sculptors who worked in abstract styles are Richard Lippold, known for his wire and metal hanging constructions, and Harry Bertoia, who used thin steel rods, assembled so as to vibrate.

Theodore Roszak made free-form constructions of steel, brazed with other metals, such as Thorn Blossom (1948, Whitney Museum); and Herbert Ferber, influenced by abstract expressionism, created a large metal construction, And the Bush Was Not Consumed (1951), for the facade of B'nai Israel Synagogue, Millburn, New Jersey. Ferber's work was an early example of the modern revival of sculpture combined with ecclesiastical architecture. Seymour Lipton has produced biomorphic sculpture composed of brazed metal sheets, such as Jungle Bloom (1954, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut), and Mark di Suvero is known for his enormous outdoor constructions, sometimes employing steel I beams, as in Ik Ook (1971-72, private collection), and movable elements.

[Versión en Español]