Viewing Room

One of the most influential artists of the 20th Century, Eduardo Chillida produced a multifaceted oeuvre that includes small-scale sculpture, plaster work, drawing, engraving and most notably, monumental public sculptures. Throughout his career, Chillida drew on his Spanish heritage—especially that of the Basque region—as well as his fascination for organic form, influences from mystic European and Eastern philosophies, poetry and history. A master of many materials and techniques, Chillida created a diverse body and profoundly moving body of work, of which ‘Basoa V’ (‘Forest V’) is an outstanding example.

Set against a cinereal field, Philip Guston’s ‘Musa’ (1975) depicts the crown of his beloved wife’s head, her fiery red mane parted down the center and curling along her brow. Heads feature throughout Guston’s work, however, those from his final decade are striking in autobiographical and existential nature, signaling an emotional reckoning with mortality. Characterized by absurdity and darkness, tenderness and anxiety, a ‘tweaking humor’ as described by critic Norbert Lynton, the ‘genre’ of these late works, he posits, ‘is travesty; hence its bubbling sense of apostasy and humor’.

Beguilingly graceful, ‘Paysanne’ (c. 1940-1942) combines elements from a number of Francis Picabia’s most fascinating series of female portraits. Celebrated for his radical appropriation of different techniques and styles, Picabia also appropriated a wide variety of sources for his innovative compositions. These included canonical imagery taken from ancient frescoes, Byzantine icons and Renaissance masterpieces, as well as Hollywood headshots, and photographs he found in magazines, such as ‘Paris Magazine’, ‘Paris Sex Appeal’ and ‘Mon Paris’. ‘Paysanne’ draws on each of these.

Recognized across applied arts and design, Max Bill is one of the most prominent and innovative figures of Concrete and Constructivist art in the twentieth century, and his contributions still resonate today among younger generations of artists attracted by the reduction characteristic of his works. In his formative years, from 1927 to 1929, Bill studied at the Bauhaus under the great László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers, Walter Gropius, and Oskar Schlemmer and the tenets of these practitioners would inform Bill’s interdisciplinary work for the rest of his life.

A master of many materials and techniques, Alexander Calder created a diverse body of work that represents a career-long interest in voids and volumes. Calder’s experience as an artist with a direct and intuitive process gave him the unique skills to imagine and create new forms of art that radically alter our experience of space. His revolutionary techniques allowed him to suspend his ‘mobiles’ from ceilings and create ‘stabiles’ of immense complexity.

Created during the last decade of Louise Bourgeois’s life, ‘Hours of the Day’ (2006), a suite of twelve embroidered clocks on fabric, is a meditation on temporality. A long held interest, Bourgeois was fascinated by time’s endless, reiterative loops, which she explored in her psychologically charged art. She reasoned: ‘Time—time lived, time forgotten, time shared… What does time inflict—dust and disintegration? My reminiscences help me live in the present, and I want them to survive.’ [1]

2022 Bronze Ed. 1/2 + 1 AP 340 x 150 x 180 cm / 133 ⅞ x 59 x 70 ⅞ in

Meticulously executed, ‘Untitled (“Y is for the ambush of youth and escaping it year by year.”)’ (2013–2017) is an outstanding example of Roni Horn’s highly technical sculptures. Exploring the effect of multiplicity, perception and identity, Horn plays with a disjunction between the physical properties of sculpture and the pictorial illusions of its presence.

Referred to as one of David Smith’s ‘first masterpieces’ by American art critic Hilton Kramer, ‘Unity of Three Forms’ (1937) marks a touch point of maturity in Smith’s early and experimental practice. [1] At this time, Smith’s sculptures ranged from bronze plaques to steel and aluminum constructions that often bravely straddled the gap between abstraction and figuration. Building on this, art historian Edward Fry noted that this sculpture was ‘one of the first works in which Smith espouse[d] a non-objective constructivist aesthetic,’ which is evidenced by its geometric yet dynamic form. [2]

Elegant and dynamic, ‘CUPCAKECUTIE’ (2008) is an outstanding example of John Chamberlain’s adventurous sculptural practice. Part of the artist’s ‘Wheel’ series, consisting of less than twenty works, this striking sculpture captures the complexity and innovation that underscores Chamberlain’s sixty-year career. It showcases the ceaseless ingenuity and pioneering vision that defined his mature oeuvre as he undertook more delicate and whimsical configurations. From any perspective, the sculpture takes a different form, prompting the viewer to explore each eccentric fold, twist, and curl.

Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, Louise Bourgeois’s sculpture is synonymous with a decades-long practice rooted in explorations of memory, relationships, and psychological states. Often autobiographical in nature, her imagery traces childhood trauma and the fraught terrain of femininity, while also resonating on a much wider level—conjuring past and present experiences to address issues of identity, gender, sexuality, and motherhood.

Photo: Mark Setteducati© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY