Tag: abstractsculpture

Richard Hunt

Hunt, a descendant of enslaved people who in the last half of the twentieth century rose to become the world’s preeminent African American abstract sculptor, died on December 16 at his home in Chicago. Hunt created sculptures that appeared almost weightless despite the heft of the materials from which they were made, evoking ascent, escape, and freedom. His monumental works grace public spaces around the globe. Visit his official site to see quotes about Richard from some titans of the Art world.
#richardhunt

Kevin Cole

gets a mention in this Shantay Robinson essay at BlackArtinAmerica.com titled Black Abstraction: Symbolizing Reality for Meaning. Robinson notes that Black art is going through a figurative painting renaissance as we look at the number of contemporary artists painting portraits. But abstract artists, Julie Mehretu and Mark Bradford, are performing at the top of the artworld.

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#kevincole

Alexander Ney

Got to drop in on Beyond the Surface: Collage, Mixed Media and Textile Works from the Collection at the always excellent (and fortunately local) Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University recently and just love the Alexander Ney below.

Turns out it’s an early work and not wish he’s most known for.

#alexanderney

Melvin Edwards

ArtNews asks us who gets to be abstract in the context of revisiting Frank Bowling‘s show from 1969, “5+1”(a show which also included Al, Jack, Daniel and William)? I had heard of Melvin Edwards before from listening to this amazing artist talk. In my head I didn’t lump Melvin in with Sam and William because candidly there is a lot of recognizable materials in his work (see below) and then of course this article made me question that. tldr- the punchline of the essay is that, when Stony Brook attempted to re-stage the show the curators found significant archival gaps because the academic gatekeepers of the late ’60s didn’t deem the show important enough to document. The show reboot also includes many black women such as Howardena and Mary.

More (and more #blackartists)

#melvinedwards

Richard Smith

Richard Smith, CBE (27 October 1931 – 15 April 2016) was an English painter and printmaker. Smith produced work in a range of styles, and is credited with extending the field of painting through his shaped, sculptural canvases. A key figure in the British development of Pop Art, Smith was chosen to represent Britain in the 1970 Venice Biennale.

#richardsmith

Margaret Saliske

In her newest work, Margaret imagines a shape and then works it out against the wall altering it perhaps the way a potter manipulates clay pushing and pulling angles. The form then suggests how the black will interact with it and connect it to the wall. In some of the pieces there is a visual sequence that moves from object, to actual plane, to implied plane. There is an ambiguity in the relationship between these planes that the viewer resolves by moving around the pieces.
#margaretsaliske

Lee Bontecou

Lee Bontecou (January 15, 1931 – November 8, 2022) was an American sculptor and printmaker and a pioneer figure in the New York art world. She kept her work consistently in a recognizable style, and received broad recognition in the 1960s. Rich, organic shapes and powerful energy appear in her drawings, prints, and sculptures. Her work has been shown and collected in many major museums in the United States and in Europe.

#leebontecou

Kristi Cavataro

Chemists call glass an amorphous solid. Positioned between states of matter, it features a slightly tweaked, irregular molecular fabric that deviates from the crystalline compositions forming other types of hardened material. Like plastics and gels, glass is defined by a structural ambiguity at the most granular level, one split between strict organization and total disorder.In Kristi Cavataro’s current exhibition, the artist seems to have taken her signature material’s idiosyncratic makeup as a cue for her sculptures’ beguiling forms.
#kristicavataro