Modular constructivism
Description
Modular constructivism is a style of sculpture that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s and was associated especially with Erwin Hauer and Norman Carlberg. It is based on carefully structured modules which allow for intricate and in some cases infinite patterns of repetition, sometimes used to create limitless, basically planar, screen-like formations, and sometimes employed to make more multidimensional structures. Designing these structures involves intensive study of the combinatorial possibilities of sometimes quite curvilinear and fluidly shaped modules, creating a seamless, quasi-organic unity that can be either rounded and self-enclosed, or open and potentially infinite. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Erwin Hauer
Austrian-born American sculptor and supreme pioneer of Modular Constructivism who invented light-diffusing biomorphic architectural screens based on infinite combinatorial saddles.
Norman Carlberg
Co-founder of Modular Constructivism and director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture whose rigorous formalist modular units explored infinite structural geometry.
Josef Albers
Bauhaus master and influential professor at Yale University whose strict spatial and geometric formalist pedagogy deeply inspired Hauer and Carlberg.
Ruth Asawa
Celebrated sculptor who developed modular, interlocking wire looped sculptures that explored biomorphic transparency, light, and nested structural continuity.
Eduardo Chillida
Prominent formalist sculptor whose interlocking concrete and iron spatial structures explored monumental architectural modularity and negative space.
Malcolm Leland
American architectural sculptor who designed innovative modular precast concrete screen systems and geometric bas-relief facades during the mid-20th century.
Famous Artworks
Fun Facts
Erwin Hauer designed his complex, biomorphic saddle-surface modules without the aid of computers; he spent thousands of hours carving precise plaster and wood prototypes by hand so they would interlock smoothly across infinite three-dimensional axes.
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org
When Norman Carlberg studied under Josef Albers at Yale, Albers taught his students to evaluate modular structures with strict visual formalism without seeking personal emotion or narratives, inspiring Carlberg to declare that 'the message was almost always out of it - you looked at it formally just for what it was.'
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org