Claire Falkenstein

Claire Falkenstein (; Claire attended Anna Head School in the Oakland–Berkeley, California, area after her family moved there.

As a child, Falkenstein would ride her horse in the dark on the beach to see the sun come up and spend time looking at the shells, rocks, seaweed, and driftwood, and these nature forms inspired her sculpture.

Falkenstein attended the University of California at Berkeley, and graduated in 1930 with a major in art and minors in anthropology and philosophy. Falkenstein not only uses topology in terms of the math around her sculptures but specifically the form of a “u” to create many of her sculptures.

In many of her pieces, one being “U” as a Set at the California International Sculpture Symposium held at California State University, Long Beach in 1965, she used the form of “u’s” in her pieces to create a larger form of a “u”. “U” as a Set was created much like her other works by using copper pipes, though varying in length and diameter. Tying back to topology, this piece creates a flowing and “airy” response that both interacts with its surroundings and contradicts it. Two years after the symposium, the piece was moved in front of the Macintosh building at California State University, Long Beach, a modernist building made out of brick. The conflicting simplicity of the building and the complexity/fluidity of the sculpture creates a blank red background to assess the work. It also allows for the full effect of the topological style to take form, as you can see the working forces of the all the combined, abstract “u” forms of the copper pipes interact with each other and the air around it to create the feeling of dynamism, and the overall shape of another abstract “u”. Similarly, this technique was used in all 41 pieces of her series Point as a Set, which also uses hollow copper tubes and fragments in the shape of abstract “u’s” to create pieces that suggest movement thus interacting with space around them.

Life and work

San Francisco

Falkenstein's experience with those artists reinforced her interest in abstraction, as well as ideas that functional considerations do not detract from a work's aesthetic appeal, and that she was free to experiment with a wide variety of new techniques and materials. They were married for 22 years. They had known each other in high school; they were divorced because he didn't join her in her desire to live in Paris.

One of her most well-known pieces is The New Gates of Paradise, constructed of metal webbing with chunks of glass. Located on the Grand Canal at the Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Italy, it had been commissioned in 1960 by her friend Peggy Guggenheim. The gates, each of which was , marked the first time she created a never-ending screen with repeating modules attached in various directions, giving the impression that it could continue forever.

In 1963, Falkenstein moved to the Venice district of Los Angeles,

The Long Beach Museum of Art named its restaurant "Claire's at the Museum" in honor of Falkenstein. The artist created Structure and Flow, a fountain with twisting latticework, which was donated to the museum in 1972. This work of art, the restaurant's centerpiece, is another creation which many consider to be among her finest.

In 1977, the film: "Claire Falkenstein, Sculptor" was created by Jae Carmichael.

She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts in 1978. Her work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.

Exhibitions A small selection of Falkenstein's exhibitions:

1948 Salon des Réalités Nouvelles 1970 Drawing and Performance, E.A.T SHOW, University of Southern California Fisher Gallery 1970 Art and Technology, Brooklyn Museum 1974 California Museum of Science and Industry 1975 Phoenix Art Museum 1977 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 1978 Tate Gallery 1979 Seattle Art Museum 1980 Palm Springs Desert Museum 1981, 1985 Laguna Art Museum 1987 Peggy Guggenheim's Other Legacy, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 1992 Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles) 1994 Corcoran Gallery 1995 46th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale 1997 Claire Falkenstein, Looking Within: A Point of Departure, Fresno Art Museum

Addison Gallery of American Art University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach Coos Art Museum Crocker Art Museum Frauenau Glass Museum (Donation Wolfgang Kermer) Hammer Museum Harvard Art Museums Indianapolis Museum of Art Long Beach Museum of Art Los Angeles County Museum of Art Museum of Art and Archaeology (University of Missouri) Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art Norton Simon Museum Oakland Museum of California Peggy Guggenheim Collection Pompidou Centre