Herbert Ferber

Herbert Ferber, Homage to Piranesi V, copper, 1965-6, National Gallery of Art (Washington, D. C.) Herbert Ferber (April 30, 1906 – August 20, 1991) was an American painter and sculptor. He is an abstract expressionist and is considered a vital member of the New York School."

Background

Herbert Ferber Silvers was born on April 30, 1906, in New York City. In 1923, he began studies in both sciences and humanities at the College of the City of New York (now City College of New York or CCNY) from; in 1927, he received a BS from jointly from CCNY and Columbia University. In 1956, Ferber joined artists who protested a curvilinear slope of Frank Lloyd Wright's planned building for the Guggenheim Museum.

Personal life and death

Ferber married Sonia Stirt in 1932, Ilse Falk in 1944, and Edith Popiel in 1967, a photographer.

In 1968, Ferber stated: I became an artist because I was interested in literature particularly and not primarily in painting and sculpture. But then, while at college, along with my interest in literature I developed an interest in the history of art... I never got beyond the Metropolitan and the Museum of Natural History... [It was at] the "Tiffany Foundation where I met for the first time some other artists. awards to Ferber have included: 1942: Fifth Purchase Prize, Artists for Victory exhibition, Metropolitan Museum of Art 1943: Full member, Kappa Chapter (Columbia University), Society of Sigma Psi 1953: Joint American prize winner, International Sculpture Competition, The Unknown Political Prisoner Monument, Institute of Contemporary Art, London 1969: Guggenheim Fellowship 1979: R. S. Reynolds Memorial Award for aluminum sculpture

Commissions Ferber received numerous commissions for synagogues, e.g., a candelabrum and altar decoration for the chapel of Brandeis University. Other commissions include: a copper sculpture for the John F. Kennedy Office Building in Boston, an environmental sculpture for Rutgers University, and a steel sculpture for the American Dental Association Building in Chicago. and The World in My Kitchen (2006), written by Colette Rossant, whose husband was architect and painter James Rossant.

According to the Oxford Reference Dictionary: Among the earliest artists to produce an abstract expressionist form of sculpture, from the late 1940s he drew on constructivist and surrealist precedents to achieve vigorous, almost gestural welded abstractions. In time, his work evolved toward environmental sculpture, culminating during the 1960s in room-size installations of abstract form... An observer venturing into such a room in effect entered the sculpture. solo exhibitions have included: André Emmerich Gallery (1960, 1963-1977) Betty Parsons Gallery (1947, 1950, 1953) Columbia University School of Architecture (1960) Dag Hammarskjold Plaza Sculpture Garden (1972) Knoedler & Company (1978-1982, 1984-1987, 1989, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2001) Lowe Art Museum (2009-2010) M. Knoedler, Zurich (1984) Midtown Gallery (1937, group exhibitions have included: American Artists’ Congress (1936) André Emmerich Gallery (1976) Art Institute of Chicago (~1941-2, 1954) Betty Parsons Gallery (1947) Brooklyn Museum (1931, 2001) Buchholz Gallery (1940, 1943, 1945) Detroit Institute of Arts (1958, 1973) Jewish Museum of New York (2004, 2008, 2010) John Reed Club Gallery (1933) Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1968) Metropolitan Museum of Art (1942, 1951, 1952) Midtown Galleries (1931, 1935-1936) Musée du Jeu de Paume (1938) Musée National d'Art Moderne (1954) Musée Rodin (1965) Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (1953, 1968, 1969) Pennsylvania Academy of The Fine Arts (1931, 1942, 1943, 1945-1946, 1954, 1958) Philadelphia Museum of Art (1940, 1972) Phillips Collection (1971) Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art (1950) Smithsonian Institution (1975) Tate Gallery (1953) Walker Art Center (2002) Whitney Museum of American Art (1938, 1940, 1942, 1945-1946, 1948, 1950, 1954-1960, 1963, 1966, 1968, 1976, 1981, 1983-1984, 1988, 1999, 2000)

Ferber's work also appeared at group exhibitions at the San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition (1939), New York World's Fair (1940, 1964), the U.S. Pavilion at the World Fair in Brussels (1958), and the Seattle World's Fair (1962).

Permanent collections: Public collections holding works by Herbert Ferber include: Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, New York) Cantor Arts Center (Stanford University, Palo Alto, California) Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, Texas) Honolulu Museum of Art National Gallery of Art (Washington, D. C.) Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase College, Purchase, New York) Newark Museum (Newark, New Jersey) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Saint Louis Art Museum (St. Louis, Missouri) Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City) Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Connecticut) Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection (Albany, New York) The Jewish Museum (New York)

Works online: 1930: "Turrets" "Medical Center" "Untitled (Standing Woman)" 1931: "Untitled (Woodstock Landscape)" 1950: "Game No. 2" "The Bow" 1955-6: "Homage to Piranesi V" 1957: "Calligraph with Wall" 1960-1988: 1962-3: "Homage to Piranesi II" "Calligraph in Cage with Cluster No. 2, II (with two heads)" 1960-1967: Sculptures, paintings at Valerie Carberry Gallery 1972: "Konkapot II" (Undated): Wall Sculpture #5" (Undated): United States Department of State: Sculptures, paintings of Herbert Ferber

Books on Ferber: Agee, William C., Herbert Ferber: Sculpture, Painting, Drawing, 1945-1980 (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1983) Andersen, Wayne V., The Sculpture of Herbert Ferber (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1962) Balken, Debra Bricker, Herbert Ferber, Sculpture & Drawings, 1932-1983 (Pittsfield, Mass.: Berkshire Museum, 1984) Dreishpoon, Douglas, Between Transcendence and Brutality: American Sculptural Drawings from the 1940s and 1950s: Louise Bourgeois, Dorothy Dehner, Herbert Ferber, Seymour Lipton, Isamu Noguchi, Theodore Roszak, David Smith (Tampa: Tampa Museum of Art, 1994) Goossen, E. C., Herbert Ferber (New York: Abbeville Press, 1981) Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (New York: New York School Press, 2003) . pp. 118–121 Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York: New York School Press, 2000) . p. 18; p. 36; pp. 130–133 Verderame, Lori, The Founder of Sculpture as Environment, Herbert Ferber (1906–1991) (Hamilton, New York: Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University, 1998)