John Chamberlain

An icon of American Post-War art, John Chamberlain is renowned for his twisting, colorful sculptures made of crushed automobile steel. He worked with scrap metal for more than five decades, honing in on its purely aesthetic qualities of chipped paint, exposed chrome and crumpled folds, and consequently translating the dynamic gestures of Abstract Expressionist painting into sculpture. Although he is most known for these works, Chamberlain also explored painting, photography, printmaking, film and other processes.

In the 1950s, Chamberlain studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then at the acclaimed Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He is particularly noted for his contributions to assemblage and associated with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Joseph Cornell. Even early on in his career in 1961, he was included in the historic ‘Art of Assemblage’ exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where his sculptures were shown alongside notable Futurist, Surrealist and Cubist works. Chamberlain was born in 1927 in Indiana and passed away in New York in 2011, leaving behind a rich visual and conceptual legacy.

-       Luftschloss, 1979, Painted and chromium-plated steel, 152 x 103 x 83 inches (386.1 x 261.6 x 210.8 cm), an exemplary work in the collection of Dia Art Foundation

-       PANAMAPATTIE, 2007, Painted and chromed steel, 11 7/8 x 14 1⁄2 x 13 1⁄2 in; 30.2 x 36.8 x 34.3 cm