Brian Wall is a British-born American sculptor now living in California. His work consists mainly of abstract welded steel constructions, and his career stretches over six decades. He has had numerous solo shows, and his sculptures reside in many private and museum collections. He was a faculty member at the Central School of Art in London, and a professor of art at the University of California, Berkeley.
Brian Wall was born in Paddington, London, England in 1931; he evacuated to Yorkshire during the London Blitz of World War II. Back in London after the war, he left school at the age of 14 to take a factory job as a glass-blower. He served in the Royal Air Force as an aerial reconnaissance photographer before beginning his career as an artist in 1952, initially as a figurative painter.[1]
He moved to St. Ives, Cornwall in 1954, where there was a thriving artist colony. He worked as an assistant to Barbara Hepworth,[1] a leading Modernist sculptor. He associated with prominent St. Ives artists, including Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron, and Terry Frost, as well as young contemporaries Trevor Bell and Anthony Benjamin.[2] He was also close to the poet W.S. Graham.[3] Wall joined the Penwith Society of Arts, an organization of artists at St. Ives which promoted their work to the public, becoming secretary.[1] At St. Ives he learned to weld steel, a skill he would use in his art for the rest of his life.
After six years in St. Ives, Wall moved to London in 1960, where he interacted with writers, actors, and artists in the social energy of "swinging London." A piece of his, "Four Elements," appeared in an opening scene of the movie "Blowup".[4]Pete Townshend of the band "The Who" was a student of Wall's at Ealing Art College, and he is included in the seminal book about the London art scene of the ‘60s, “Private View”, 1966, with photographs by Lord Snowden, written by Bryan Robertson and John Russell.[5]
Brian Wall with Thornaby, 1968
Wall continued to refine his work in abstract steel sculptures and began to have his work shown in London galleries and museums, including a solo exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery,[6][7] and in the Tate Gallery's show "British Sculpture of the Sixties".[1] In 1962 he became the Head of Sculpture at the Central School of Art in London,[1] and remained there until he emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1972. During that period he met Sylvia Brown, whom he married in 1973. Wall received an important commission to build a monumental sculpture in Thornaby, England, in 1968,[8][9] the largest sculpture in England at the time. His work appeared in the New British Painting and Sculpture show in London, 1967–68[10] and at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol, England.[10]
Invited in 1969–70 as a visiting professor in the Art Department of the University of California, Berkeley, Wall joined the faculty permanently as professor in 1972, eventually serving as chair of the department; he retired in 1994.[1][2]
In the 1970s, Wall exhibited in solo shows at Sculpture Now and Max Hutchinson Gallery in New York; San Jose State University, California; University of Nevada, Las Vegas; and Braunstein Quay Gallery, San Francisco. In 1982 a retrospective exhibit appeared at the Seattle Museum of Art and travelled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.[11]
In 1975 Wall and Brown moved from Berkeley to San Francisco, and Wall established a studio in Emeryville, California across the San Francisco Bay in the same year, where he continues to create his sculptures. In 1983 Brian Wall became a U.S. citizen. His newest works comprise stainless steel pieces, still welded into purely abstract forms. These were displayed at a solo show at the de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, California in 2015.[12]
In 2014, Wall and Brown founded the Brian Wall Foundation, which benefits working artists in financial need in conjunction with the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.[13]
Wall has been represented by several galleries through the years, including Kasmin Gallery, London; Grosvenor Gallery, London; Flowers in London, Santa Monica, and New York;[14] Sculpture Now and Max Hutchinson Galleries in New York; John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco; Jernigan Wicker Fine Arts, San Francisco;[15] and Hackett | Mill Gallery, San Francisco.[16][17]
Work
Standing Form XX, 1958
At St. Ives, Brian Wall's work progressed from paintings to reliefs to sculptures. Wall's early sculptures consisted of geometrical wooden constructions, painted in bright primary colors, reminiscent of the work of Piet Mondrian[18] and influenced by the Dutch abstract art movement "de Stijl". Wassily Kandinsky brought a German expressionist influence with the book "Concerning the Spiritual in Art".[19] Wall studied Zen Buddhism, reading " Zen in the Art of Archery"[20] and met the Zen master D.T. Suzuki when he visited St. Ives. Wall was exposed to writers, e.g., James Joyce and George Bernard Shaw; and jazz in this period, all of which influenced his art. He built his own aesthetic, constructing a sculpture as a jazz musician improvises a melody.
By 1956 he had started making abstract welded steel sculptures, one of the earliest British artists to do so. The use of welded steel in sculpture was unusual then, pioneered by Julio González and David Smith.[6] His early work consisted of geometrical pieces of steel, mostly rectangular plates and rods, welded into a whole. As his style evolved, the elements became more freely-placed into a dynamic construction.
Blue Diamond, 1968
The earliest, small-scale sculptures were constructed of raw or waxed steel, or painted flat black. Over the years he increased the scale of his creations to extend to over 10–15 feet and painted in bright colors, appropriate for outdoor settings, e.g., Blue Diamond, 1968 (156" x 181" x 60"h). His art became simpler, purer, using circles, tubes, squares, etc.
Elegy at de Saisset Museum, 2012
By 2007, Wall had started using stainless steel in his work, in a series titled "Squaring the Circle": stainless steel sheets are cut into strips and welded into four-sided curved elements square in cross-section, each a section of a circle, then welded together into an abstract shape. These range in size from 1/2" thick elements a few inches long, to large pieces whose elements are up to 16" gauge, with the whole sculpture extending over ten or more feet, e.g., Elegy, 2012 (122" x 84" x 63"h).[12][21]
Throughout his career, Wall's work has been purely abstract, without reference to the outside world, or human figures. They define a space and contain their own elements in an integrated whole. "For me anyway the important breakthrough in contemporary sculpture has been the disappearance of figurative and associative imagery."[22]
Wall has produced drawings throughout his career, and in 1999 on his first visit to Japan, he started drawing in the Japanese calligraphy style, using traditional Japanese materials, e.g., Sumi ink and paper.[1] He also produced mixed-media drawings in the 1990s using oil pastels and acetate on paper, showing abstract colorful patterns.
Commissions
1968 "Thornaby" for New Town Center, Thornaby, England
1978 "Ali" for College of Technology, University of Houston, Texas
1980 "Three Corners" for Towson State University, Baltimore, Maryland
2015 “Brian Wall: Squaring the Circle,” de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, catalog[12]
Selected group exhibitions
1958 "Contemporary British Sculpture," Arts Council, London
1961 Second Paris Bienniale, Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris
1962 "Joven Escultura Inglesa," Gallery Ateneo, Madrid and Museum of Modern Art, Bilbao
1963 "British Art Today," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Dallas; Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, catalog
1964 "The London Group Jubilee," Tate Gallery, London
1965 "British Sculpture in the Sixties," Tate Gallery, London
1966 "Fifty Years of Sculpture," Grosvenor Gallery, London
1966 “Sculpture in the Open Air” Battersea Park, London, catalog
1968 “New British Sculpture and Painting,” UCLA Galleries; University Art Museum, Berkeley; Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and others, catalog
1969 "Open Air Sculpture," Scottish Arts Council, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee, catalog
1974 "Serra, Wall, Zecher," San Francisco Art Institute, catalog
Anya Gallaccio is a British artist, who creates site-specific, minimalist installations and often works with organic matter.
Sir Anthony Alfred Caro was an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using 'found' industrial objects. He began as a member of the modernist school, having worked with Henry Moore early in his career. He was lauded as the greatest British sculptor of his generation.
Allen Jones is a British pop artist best known for his paintings, sculptures, and lithography. He was awarded the Prix des Jeunes Artistes at the 1963 Paris Biennale. He is a Senior Academician at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2017 he returned to his home town to receive the award Honorary Doctor of Arts from Southampton Solent University
Ellsworth Kelly was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, color and form, similar to the work of John McLaughlin and Kenneth Noland. Kelly often employed bright colors. He lived and worked in Spencertown, New York.
Aristides Burton Demetrios was an American sculptor.
Sir Alan Bowness CBE was a British art historian, art critic, and museum director. He was the director of the Tate Gallery between 1980 and 1988.
Sir Richard Sheridan Patrick Michael Aloysius Franklin Bowling, known as Frank Bowling, is a British artist who was born in British Guiana. He is particularly renowned for his large-scale, abstract "Map" paintings, which relate to abstract expressionism, colour field painting and lyrical abstraction. Bowling has been described as "one of Britain’s greatest living abstract painters", as "one of the most distinguished black artists to emerge from post-war British art schools" and as a "modern master". British cultural critic and theorist Stuart Hall situates Bowling’s career within a first generation, or “wave” of post-war, Black-British art, one characterised by postwar politics and British decolonisation. He is the first black artist to be elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts.
John Harvey McCracken was a minimalist artist. He lived and worked in Los Angeles, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and New York.
Larry Bell is an American contemporary artist and sculptor. He is best known for his glass boxes and large-scaled illusionistic sculptures. He is a grant recipient from, among others, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and his artworks are found in the collections of many major cultural institutions. He lives and works in Taos, New Mexico, and maintains a studio in Venice, California.
Isaac Witkin was an internationally renowned modern sculptor born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Witkin entered Saint Martin's School of Art in London in 1957 and studied under Sir Anthony Caro and alongside artists including Phillip King, William G. Tucker, David Annesley, and Michael Bolus. Witkin helped create a new style of sculpture which led to this New Generation of sculptors and their innovating abstract forms of modern sculpture reaching and changing the art world. Witkin's abstract works of usually brightly colored fiberglass or wood was noted for its "witty, Pop-Art look".
James Edward Grant was an American painter and sculptor active from the late 1950s into the early 1970s. Best known for his sculptural work in plastics, this work by no means defined him but was rather a natural endpoint of an exploration into increased dimensionality—starting from abstract canvases, moving through collages and bas-reliefs until the work finally came off the wall in sculptural form.
Lynn Russell Chadwick, was an English sculptor and artist. Much of his work is semi-abstract sculpture in bronze or steel. His work is in the collections of MoMA in New York, the Tate in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Fletcher C. Benton was an American sculptor and painter from San Francisco, California. Benton was widely known for his kinetic art as well as his large-scale steel abstract geometric sculptures.
Peter Forakis was an American artist and professor. He was known as an abstract geometric sculptor.
Denis Adeane Mitchell was an English abstract sculptor who worked mainly in bronze and wood. A prominent member of the St Ives group of artists, he worked as an assistant to Barbara Hepworth for many years.
Paul Feiler was a German-born artist who was a prominent member of the St Ives School of art: he has pictures hanging in major art galleries across the world.
Luis Gutierrez is an American artist based in Los Gatos, California, USA.
Paul Joseph Kos is an American conceptual artist and educator, he is one of the founders of the Bay Area Conceptual Art movement in California. Kos incorporates video, sound and interactivity into his sculptural installations. Currently Kos lives and works in San Francisco.
Kim Lim (1936–1997) was a Singaporean-British sculptor and printmaker of Chinese descent. She is most recognized for her abstract wooden and stone-carved sculptures that explore the relationship between art and nature, and works on paper that developed alongside her sculptural practice. Lim's attention to the minute details of curve, line and surface made her an exponent of minimalism.
Robert W. Mallary was an American abstract expressionist sculptor and pioneer in computer art. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was renowned for his Neo-Dada or "junk art" sculpture, created from found materials and urban detritus, pieced together with hardened liquid plastics and resins. Mallary's work is represented in permanent collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate Modern in London.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
