Falkenstein, Claire Falkenstein
[1372]

CLAIRE FALKENSTEIN
1908-1997

Claire Falkenstein, sculptor, painter, printmaker, and teacher, was born in Coos Bay, Oregon on July 22, 1908. She came to California about 1926 and graduated from the University of California Berkeley in 1930. In the 1930s Falkenstein opened her first solo show at the East-West Gallery in San Francisco and taught in Berkley at the Anna Head School and the University of California. She studied sculpture with Alexander Archipenko at Mills College during the summer of 1933. In 1934 she married Richard McCarthy and was also known as Claire McCarthy. She made her first prints in 1940 when she studied with Stanley William Hayter when he taught a course at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. She returned to study atAtelier 17 in Paris in the 1950s.

Falkenstein taught drawing at Mills College from 1945 to 1948 and began teaching at the California School of Fine Arts in 1947. She visited Paris in 1950 and decided to stay, opening her studio on the Left Bank. In Paris, she worked on her metal sculpture and developed experimental collagraphs at Atelier 17. She returned to California in 1962, settling in Venice and focused her energies on large site sculptures.

The Palm Springs Desert Museum mounted a large retrospective of her work in 1980 and she is included in museum collections internationally.

Claire Falkenstein died in Venice, California on October 23, 1997.

Claire Falkenstein was one of the most dynamic and prolific artists of her time. Upon graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in 1930 with a degree in art and minors in anthropology and philosophy, she had already had her first gallery exhibition. Her work became almost entirely abstract early in her career as her experimental style smashed boundaries between media. This can be seen in the sculptural and atmospheric composition in Untitled (lot 17) as well as the almost three-dimensional drawing quality of Structure and Flow (lot 19). As she once notably said "Everything is drawing. Sculpture is drawing." (conversation between the artist and Maren Henderson, Ph.D, 4 April1988)

Falkenstein moved among the celebrated artistic figures of both the San Francisco area in the 1930s and 1940s, including her friend Clyfford Still, and in Paris, where Mark Tobey, Sam Francis and Jean Arp were among her circle. She followed her independent spirit and left her husband when she moved to live and work in Paris from 1950 to 1963. Falkenstein began using wire while in Paris, which became a signature material of her oeuvre. During her time in Europe, she completed a commission for Peggy Guggenheim's Venetian Palazzo New Gates of Paradise (1960), which has become one of her most recognizable works.

Falkenstein's practice was rooted in a deep intellectual and formal sophistication. Her interest in scientific theory, and particularly those of Albert Einstein, informed her bold and exploratory sculptural practice. Untitled (lot 18) with its cornucopia-like abundance of jewel colored glass nestled in a riot of thin metal strands and is reminiscent of a galaxy in miniature.

In 1963, she moved from Paris to the Venice area of Los Angeles where she continued to pursue artmaking until the last year of her life with relentless boldness and creativity.

Born in Coos Bay (North Bend), Oregon 1908. Died in Venice, California 1997
Claire Falkenstein went to college at the University of California, Berkeley, studying in Art, Anthropology and Philosophy. Falkenstein tudied with Alexander Archipenko and collaborated with architects, engineers and craftsmen.
Falkenstein worked in San Francisco until 1950. She exhibited throughout America and several times in Paris during the decade from 1940 to 1950. In 1950 moved to Paris as a center for work, exhibited in both solo and group shows throughout Europe and occasionally in America and japan. Her present studio location is Venice, California.

Appointments:

The Anna Head School, Berkeley, Cal
University of California Berkeley Extension Division
Mills College, Oakland, California
California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute)
Visiting Artist 1983 Pilchuck School of Glass Blowing
1983 Taught sculpture Idyllwild
Serving on the cultural grant advisory panel- Cultural Affairs Commission and Dept. for Arts Organizations to Mayor & City Council, 1984 of L.A.
San Francisco Museum of Art
UCLA Extension Division
Utah State University
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
California State University Davis

Awards:
Grant to study with Alexander Archipenko, Mills College Oakland Calif. 1934
International Sculpture symposium, State University Long Beach, Calif. 1965}
Total Design Award by NSID in 1969
Women of the Year for Art by the Los Angeles Times 1969
Alumni Friends of Arts and Humanities Extension Division UCLA cited for Teaching Excellence 1972
Fellowship Grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation 1978-1979
Women Artist Honored by the National Women's Caucus for Art, San Francisco Conference 1981

Permanent Collections:
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay, OR
Harvard University Art Museums, Boston, MA
USC Fisher Museum of Art, Los Angelos, CA
Los Angelos County Museum of Art, Los Angelos, CA
The Tate Gallery, London, England

Claire Falkenstein (1908–1997) was one of America’s most experimental and productive twentieth-century artists. She relentlessly explored media, techniques, and processes with uncommon daring and intellectual rigor. Though she was respected among the bourgeoning Post-World-War-II art scene in the United States and Europe, her disregard for the commodification of art coupled with her peripatetic movement from one art metropolis to another made her an elusive figure as well. 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. Falkenstein’s current reputation rests on her sculpture, and her work in three dimensions was often radical and ahead of her time. Uniquely prolific among artists, she began and ended her career as an inventive painter; her work also included printmaking, jewelry, glass, films, stage sets for dance, public murals, fountains, and monumental architectural commissions, including the gates to the Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the glass window “sculptures” for St. Basil Church in Los Angeles. Although Falkenstein’s extensive oeuvre can appear bewilderingly diverse and close to possessing what French critic Michel Tapié praised as and Marcel Duchamp advocated for as a “style-less style,” virtually all of her works are based on several distinctive structural systems, which became her personal, formal vocabulary. This retrospective traces and details the development of Falkenstein’s work both chronologically and geographically, through the inclusion of approximately 65 key works—encompassing nearly every media she explored—from the early 1930s through the 1990s.

Curated by Jay Belloli, the exhibition is organized by the Pasadena Museum of California Art and is accompanied by a catalogue. Following its debut at the PMCA it will travel to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.

Claire Falkenstein: Beyond Sculpture at the Pasadena Museum of California Art

September 9, 2016 Art in Los Angeles Julika Lackner Comment
April 17, 2016–September 11, 2016

This is an Inspirational exhibition. Claire Falkenstein was a California artist who worked in many mediums, but I especially enjoyed seeing her paintings. The influence of the lanscape on nature on her work was so nice to see, especially in the painting of Yosemite. I also work closely from and with nature and it's always lovely to see how another artist does something along the same lines, yet different. Also her use of silver and other metallic paints, how they move and shimmer in the light, were great to see.

Claire Falkenstein (1908–1997) was one of America’s most experimental and productive twentieth-century artists. She 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 the United States and Europe, her disregard for the commodification of art coupled with her peripatetic movement from one art metropolis to another made her an elusive figure as well. 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. Falkenstein’s current reputation rests on her sculpture, and her work in three dimensions was often radical and ahead of her time. Uniquely prolific among artists, she began and ended her career as an inventive painter; her work also included printmaking, jewelry, glass, films, stage sets for dance, public murals, fountains, and monumental architectural commissions, including the gates to the Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the glass window “sculptures” for St. Basil Church in Los Angeles. Although Falkenstein’s extensive oeuvre can appear bewilderingly diverse and close to possessing what French critic Michel Tapié praised as and Marcel Duchamp advocated for as a “style-less style,” virtually all of her works are based on several distinctive structural systems, which became her personal, formal vocabulary. This retrospective traces and details the development of Falkenstein’s work both chronologically and geographically, through the inclusion of approximately 65 key works—encompassing nearly every medium she explored—from the early 1930s through the 1990s.

Curated by Jay Belloli, Claire Falkenstein: Beyond Sculpture is organized by the Pasadena Museum of California Art. The exhibition is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division; the Southern California Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts; Pasadena Art Alliance; Kim and Al Eiber; Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York; the California Art Company, LLC; and the Pasadena Museum of California Art’s Board of Directors and Ambassador Circle. Following its debut at the PMCA, the exhibition will travel to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition.