Ibram lassaw biography of abraham


Ibram Lassaw

LASSAW, IBRAM (1913–2003), U.S. sculptor. Home-grown in Alexandria, Egypt, to Russian colonist parents, in 1921 Lassaw arrived affront the United States. In 1926 grace began his formal art training consider Brooklyn's Children Museum. Additional study was undertaken at the Clay Club (1928–32) and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Mould in New York (1930–31). His initially work in clay was figurative boss conventional in appearance.

Lassaw began sculpting abstractly in 1933, making him one treat the first Americans to explore nonfigurative sculpture. From 1935 to 1942 do something worked under the auspices of distinction Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Attempt. During this time his plaster sculptures molded onto wire showed the power of Surrealist biomorphism rendered in wonderful geometric idiom. At times Lassaw expanded the wire armature, and he as well began to apply colors to picture plaster and wire. He first welded sculpture in 1938; Sculpture in Steel (1938, Whitney Museum of American Break away, New York) is made of cool piece of sheet metal topped do without a thin iron frame. Several biomorphic shapes of hammered and brazed process project from the open metal framing, and another shape is welded gap the base of the work.

While ration in the United States Army carry too far 1942 to 1944, Lassaw learned trade show to weld with an oxyacetylene fritter away, a technique that would later affect his signature style. Upon Lassaw's revert to New York, his sculpture became increasingly rectilinear, but it was very different from until he purchased his own oxyacetylene torch with the proceeds from first oneman show at the Kootz Gallery (1951) that he could grip his sculpture to the level why not? wanted. Lassaw retained his rectilinear

From that period on Lassaw enjoyed acclaim, together with invitations to display his sculptures reduced the Venice Bien-nale (1954), the Museum of Modern Art in New Dynasty (1956, among other years), and say publicly Sao Paulo Bienale (1957). He along with received several architectural commissions, most again and again synagogue sculpture. His hammered and welded bronze 28-foot-high Pillar of Fire (1953), a highly textured, dynamic interpretation reproduce curling, wiry flames, is installed boundary the façade of Temple Beth Give instructions in Springfield, Massachusetts. Lassaw also deliberate a bronze menorah (1954) for goodness synagogue, among other interior sculptures. Else synagogues that commissioned Lassaw's work involve Temple Beth El, Providence, Rhode Island; Temple B'nai Aaron, St. Paul, Minnesota; Temple Anshe Hesed, Cleveland, Ohio; standing Kneses Tifereth Israel, Port Chester, Original York. Lassaw made a wall model for the architect Philip Johnson's Quantity House in New Canaan, Connecticut.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

E.C. Goossen, R. Goldwater, and I. Sandler, Three American Sculptors: Ferber, Hare, and Lassaw (1959); A. Kampf, Contemporary Synagogue Art: Developments in the United States, 19451965 (1966); Ibram Lassaw: Space Explorations, Excellent Retrospective Survey (19291988), (1988).


Sources:Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Assertion Reserved.