Mark di Suvero

NEW YORK—The Paula Cooper Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of smaller scale sculpture by internationally acclaimed artist Mark di Suvero at 465 West 23rd Street. The exhibition will open on September 12 and will remain on view through November 23rd.

On view will be a selection of small-scale sculptures made of steel, titanium and stainless steel. Di Suvero’s ability to infuse the industrial materials with impressions of humanity and the natural world are just as apparent in these smaller sculptures as in the monumental, large-scale works for which he is best known. The gestural movements and playfully dynamic spirit of di Suvero’s sculptures frequently invite the viewer’s active participation. With his masterful handling of metal (cut, welded, bent and curled) and his delicate balancing of space and form, di Suvero exhibits his unique capacity to simultaneously communicate ideas of mass and weightlessness, gravity and force, and the physical and imaginative.

Di Suvero was born in 1933 in Shanghai, China to Italian parents. In 1941 his family emigrated from China to California, where di Suvero received his B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1957 di Suvero moved to New York, and in 1960 he had his first, widely praised exhibition at the Green Gallery. He later co-founded the Park Place Gallery, an artist-run cooperative where he exhibited through 1967. In 1986 he established Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, NY, converting a previous landfill into a lively exhibition space for artists of all ages and a park for neighborhood residents.

Di Suvero’s distinctive and epic assemblages of steel and wood are in museums and public collections around the world and have enhanced public spaces for decades. He was given his first retrospective exhibition in 1975 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Other major exhibitions include: Le Jardin des Tuileries, Paris in 1975 (where he was the first living artist to show his work); the Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York in 1985, 1995-96, 2005-06 and 2008; a citywide exhibition in Venice, Italy in 1995; the citywide exhibition Mark di Suvero in Paris, France in 1997; Millennium Park, Chicago, Illinois in 2007; and Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Coral Gables, Florida in 2008. Among the awards he has received are the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award from the International Sculpture Center, the Public Art Network Award given by Americans for the Arts and the Heinz Award for the Arts and Humanities.

For more information, please contact the gallery: (212) 255-1105 or
info@paulacoopergallery.com