CategoriesStyles and Movements
Abstract Sculpture
Three-dimensional work that uses mass, space, material and movement for their own sake rather than to represent figures or things.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
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About
Sculpture's break with the figure began with construction. Pablo Picasso's sheet-metal Guitar (1914) and Vladimir Tatlin's counter-reliefs of the same years were assembled rather than carved or cast, and they treated empty space as part of the work. Constantin Brancusi went the other way, refining a bird or a head into a single polished form.
Barbara Hepworth pierced carved stone and wood in the 1930s so that light passed through; Alexander Calder hung balanced metal shapes that turn in moving air. After 1945 David Smith welded stainless steel boxes and cylinders into his Cubi series (1961–65), and Anthony Caro set brightly painted steel directly on the floor, without a plinth. In the 1960s Dan Flavin worked with fluorescent tubes and Eva Hesse with latex and fibreglass. Look for how a piece meets the ground, how it occupies the space around it and what its material is allowed to do.
Related artists
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Abstract versus Figurative Art
Abstraction-Création
