Scholar Talk: Dr. Marin R. Sullivan at the Figge Art Museum -- September 14.
Thursday, September 14, 6:30 p.m.
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
Held in conjunction with the Figge Art Museum's new exhibition Quanta of Space: The Bosom Sculpture of Ibram Lassaw, which features works by the Russian-American sculptor revered for his non-objective construction in brazed metals, a special Scholar Talk with Dr. Marin R. will take place at the Davenport venue on September 14, with the presenter sharing her research on Lassaw's Synagogue commissions and more general sculptural commissions for mid-century architectural settings.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt, of Russian émigré parents, Lassaw originally came to the United States in 1921, and became a citizen in 1928. He first studied sculpture at the Clay Club and later at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York, and also made abstract paintings and drawings influenced by Kandinsky, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and other artists. Influenced by his study of art history and readings in European art magazines, Lassaw began to make sculpture in the late 1920s, and during the mid-1930s, he worked briefly for the Public Works of Art Project cleaning sculptural monuments around New York City. He subsequently joined the WPA as a teacher and sculptor until he was drafted into the army in 1942.
Lassaw's contribution to the advancement of sculptural abstraction went beyond mere formal innovation, and his promotion of modernist styles during the 1930s did much to insure the growth of abstract art in the United States. The artist was a part of the New York School of Abstract expressionism during the 1940s and 1950s, and from 1955 to 1963, before he moved there permanently, Lassaw spent summers on the southern shore of Long Island alongside artists including Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, James Brooks, John Ferren, and Willem de Kooning. With the artist having passed in 2003, Lassaw's work has been exhibited in venues including the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in New York City and Harmon Meek Gallery in Naples, Florida.
Although remembered as one of a few pioneering Abstract Expressionist sculptors, Lassaw was less well known for his wearable sculptures, and between 1951 and the late 1990s, he produced an extraordinary array of jewelry for family and friends. Employing unique combinations of metals as well as the techniques, colors, and forms found in his large-scale direct metal sculptures, his welded and brazed necklaces and broaches embody Lassaw's interests in automatic drawing and surrealist impulses, as well as diverse interests in Zen Buddhism, Cosmology, and quantum physics.
The first exhibition to focus on Lassaw’s innovative “Bosom Sculpture,” as he called his necklaces and pendants, Quanta of Space: The Bosom Sculpture of Ibram Lassaw (on display from September 9 through December 3) features 36 unique examples of jewelry as well as nine of the artist's signature sculptures created over a span of five decades.
The Scholar Talk with Dr. Marin R. Sullivan will take place at 6:30 p.m. on September 14, with a Figge member reception starting at 5 p.m. Admission to Dr. Sullivan's public event is free, and more information is available by calling (563)326-7804 and visiting FiggeArtMuseum.org.
