Claire Falkenstein

Claire Falkenstein ( July 22, 1908 – October 23, 1997) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, jewelry designer, and teacher, most renowned for her often large-scale abstract metal and glass public sculptures. Falkenstein was one of America's most experimental and productive twentieth-century artists.
Falkenstein relentlessly explored media, techniques, and processes with uncommon daring and intellectual rigor. Though she was respected among the burgeoning post–World War II art scene in Europe and the United States, her disregard for the commodification of art coupled with her peripatetic movement from one art metropolis to another made her an elusive figure.Falkenstein first worked in the San Francisco Bay Area, then in Paris and New York, and finally in Los Angeles. She was involved with art groups as radical as the Gutai Group in Japan and art autre in Paris and secured a lasting position in the vanguard, which she held until her death in 1997.An interest in Einstein's theories of the universe inspired Falkenstein to create sculptures from wire and fused glass that explored the concept of infinite space. Falkenstein's current reputation rests on her sculpture, and her work in three dimensions was often radical and ahead of her time. Wikipedia

Claire Falkenstein

Claire Falkenstein (July 22, 1908 – October 23, 1997) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, jewelry designer, and teacher, most renowned for her often large-scale abstract metal and glass public sculptures.
Claire Falkenstein was born on July 22, 1908, in Coos Bay, Oregon. Her father managed a lumber mill. Claire attended Anna Head School in the Oakland–Berkeley, California area after her family moved there.She attended the University of California at Berkeley, and graduated in 1930 with a major in art and minors in anthropology and philosophy. She had her first one-woman exhibition, at a San Francisco gallery, even before graduation.[6] Her art education continued in the early 1930s at Mills College, where she took a master class with Alexander Archipenko, and met László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes.Wikipedia

American sculptor Claire Falkenstein is best known for her fusions of tangled copper and melted glass. She worked with a variety of material, including traditional wood and stone, as well as experimenting with plastic, steel, glass, and aluminum. Likewise, she produced a wide range of forms, including furniture, fountains, wallpaper, jewelry, and large public works. From 1950 through the early ‘60s she lived in Europe, where she met Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti. There she created her most famous commission, the doors for the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, a twisted web of metal and colored glass. In post-war Paris she worked with simple materials that could be found at the hardware store, especially wire, which she used to “draw” sculptural forms. “Everything is drawing,” she said. “Sculpture is drawing.”(artsy.net)