Herbert Ferber (1906 – 1991) was an American

Abstract Expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

, sculptor and painter, and a "driving force 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 The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

or CCNY) from; in 1927, he received a BS from jointly from CCNY and

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. In 1927, he took night classes in sculpture through 1930 at the

Beaux-Arts Institute of Design The Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (BAID, later the National Institute for Architectural Education) was an art and architectural school at 304 East 44th Street in Turtle Bay, Manhattan, in New York City.Beaux Arts in Paris," Ferber later recalled) and then studied for six months at the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...

. That summer, he was awarded a scholarship to work at

The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation was founded in 1918 by Louis Comfort Tiffany to operate his estate, Laurelton Hall, in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. It was designed to be a summer retreat for artists and craftspeople. In 1946 the estate c ...

Oyster Bay, New York The Town of Oyster Bay is the easternmost of the three towns which make up Nassau County, New York, United States. Part of the New York metropolitan area, it is the only town in Nassau County to extend from the North Shore to the South Shore o ...

. In 1930, he graduated in oral and dental surgery at Columbia.

Career

Ferber practiced dentistry and taught part-time at the Columbia Dental School during the 1930s; he continued to sculpt and practice dentistry up through the 1950s.

William Zorach William Zorach (February 28, 1889 – November 15, 1966) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer. He won the Logan Medal of the arts. He is notable for being at the forefront of American artists embracing cubism, as well as fo ...

and Julio Gonzales influenced Ferber (and

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

, but Ferber himself also credited painter David McCosh:

David McCosh... who had studied at the
Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...
, and whom I had met at the Tiffany Foundation at Oyster Bay... began to increase my knowledge of what art was about because here was a man who had really studied in a good art school and who had been in Europe for a year and was a follower of Cézanne. And he opened my eyes to a great many possibilities in painting and sculpture which I wasn't even aware of... Through McCosh I met some other artists... And we met some other artists who were studying at the
League League or The League may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Leagues'' (band), an American rock band * ''The League'', an American sitcom broadcast on FX and FXX about fantasy football Sports * Sports league * Rugby league, full contact footba ...
and also... Theodore Roszak.

In 1931, Ferber sculpted in wood and stone. In 1935, he joined New York's Midtown Galleries. In 1936, he joined the

Artists Union The Artists Union or Artists' Union was a short-lived union of artists in New York City in the years of the Great Depression. It was influential in the establishment of both the Public Works of Art Project in December 1933 and the Federal Art Pr ...

and took part in the first American Artists' Congress. During the 1930s, his works were "primarily figurative and imagistic," influenced in part by an interest in German expressionists as well as African and pre-Columbian sculpture. By the mid-1930s, Ferber found himself " very much disenchanted with the whole Communist movement." In 1938, he traveled to Europe and saw Romanesque sculpture. In 1940, he joined fellow anti-Stalinist artists (

Ilya Bolotowsky Ilya Bolotowsky (July 1, 1907 – November 22, 1981) was a leading early 20th-century Russian-American painter in abstract styles in New York City. His work, a search for philosophical order through visual expression, embraced cubism and ge ...

Adolph Gottlieb Adolph Gottlieb (March 14, 1903 – March 4, 1974) was an American abstract expressionist painter, sculptor and printmaker. Early life and education Adolph Gottlieb, one of the "first generation" of Abstract Expressionists, was born in New Yo ...

Mark Rothko Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latv ...

Meyer Schapiro Meyer Schapiro (23 September 1904 – 3 March 1996) was a Lithuanian-born American art historian known for developing new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art. An expert on earl ...

, David Smith,

Bradley Walker Tomlin Bradley Walker Tomlin (August 19, 1899 – May 11, 1953) belonged to the generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists. He participated in the famous ‘’Ninth Street Show.’’ According to John I. H. Baur, Curator of the ...

) in forming the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors as a spin-off of the Communist-aligned American Artists' Congress. In 1940, Ferber changed his approach to sculpture from carving to gluing and doweling; he last worked in wood in 1944. Ferber came under the influence of

Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi- abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced ...

. In 1945, Ferber began experimenting in steel-reinforced concrete, abstract sculpture, and metal-soldering. Starting in 1946, he associated with

painters, frequented

Peggy Guggenheim Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim ( ; August 26, 1898 – December 23, 1979) was an American art collector, bohemian and socialite. Born to the wealthy New York City Guggenheim family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with t ...

's Art of This Century, and became more interested in

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

. In the 1950s, Ferber began creating "roofed" and "caged" sculpture. In 1952, Ferber completed a commission for the facade of the Congregation B'nai Israel; the result was the relief sculpture "Titled And the bush was not consumed."Jewish art in America: an introduction, Matthew Baigell, Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, p. 108. In 1956, Ferber joined artists who protested a curvilinear slope of

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...

's planned building for the

Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...

. Throughout the 1950s, Ferber lectured on and exhibited metal sculpture and site-specific sculpture. In 1961, for the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, he created one of the first indoor environmental installations, "Titled Sculpture as Environment," a fiberglass piece for an entire room with interior spaces to visit. His work as a teacher included visiting professorships at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1962–63), and Rutgers University, New Jersey (1965–67). In the 1970s and 1980s, Ferber worked on large, abstract forms and also returned to painting as well as painted sculpture. In 1971, as guardian of

's daughter Kate, Ferber charged executors of the

estate of conspiring with the

Marlborough Gallery Marlborough Fine Art was founded in London in 1946 by Frank Lloyd and Harry Fischer. In 1963, a gallery was opened as Marlborough-Gerson in Manhattan, New York, at the Fuller Building on Madison Avenue and 57th Street, which later relocated in ...

to waste the estate's assets. An eight-month trial ended in October 1974, eventually leading to dismissal of executors and gallery, heavy fines, and appointment of Kate Rothko as executor. Remaining paintings went to her and brother Christopher Rothko; a foundation gave its share of the works to museums.

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 A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more ...
... t was atthe "Tiffany Foundation where I met for the first time some other artists.

Herbert Ferber died age on August 20, 1991, of cancer of the bile at his summer home in

Egremont, Massachusetts Egremont is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 1,372 at the 2020 census. Egremont consists of two villages, North Egremont and S ...

Awards

According to the Herbert Ferber Estate, 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 , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , pro ...

. 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. According to the Herbert Ferber Estate, commissions to Ferber have included: * 1951: B'nai Israel Synagogue, Millburn, New Jersey. * 1954: Berlin Chapel, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts * 1956: Temple Aaron, St. Paul, Minnesota * 1957: Temple Anshe Chesed, Cleveland, Ohio * 1961: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York * 1965: Commons Building, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey * 1977-78: City of Ottumwa, Iowa

Legacy

In 1978, Ferber appeared in ''Masters of Modern Sculpture'', Part Three, by Michael Blackwood. At his death in 1991, the ''New York Times'' said:

Mr. Ferber was one of a small group of American sculptors who in the 1940s began to break with the traditional notion of sculpture as a solid, closed mass. He made open, airy forms that, as he put it, "pierced" space rather than displaced it, and he is credited with creating, in 1960, one of the first environmental sculptures intended for people to walk through... Mr. Ferber was also an accomplished painter, his canvases taking the form of sculpturelike reliefs on which he painted abstract motifs."

In 2019, the ''Wall Street Journal'' noted:

In 1949,
Clement Greenberg Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formal ...
counted Ferber, along with
Isamu Noguchi was an American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public artworks, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several ...
and (David) Smith, among a handful of "sculptor-constructors who have a chance... to contribute something ambitious, serious and original" to what he recognized as an important "new genre" of American metal sculpture.

Ferber and his wife appear in accounts of New York circles, including ''Writings on Art'' by

(2006) and ''The World in My Kitchen'' (2006), written by

Colette Rossant Colette Rossant (born 1932) is a French-American cookbook author, journalist, translator, and restaurateur, who is a member of the Pallache family. Background Born in Paris, Rossant traveled with her mother to Cairo to live with her father and ...

, whose husband was architect and painter

James Rossant James Stephan Rossant (August 17, 1928 – December 15, 2009) was an American architect, artist, and professor of architecture. A long-time Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, he is best known for his master plan of ...

. 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.

Works

Ferber's best-known sculptures are open, hollow forms in soldered and welded metal. While abstract, their titles and spiky forms often suggest forces in conflict. ('Labors of Hercules' is an example). By the mid-1950s, he began to create, what he called, roofed sculptures―some parts of which hung from the ceiling while other parts rose from the floor. These were followed by so-called cage works―large, boxy forms within which other forms were set. With , Ferber created an installation executed in fiberglass for a room at the

in New York City, opening up the interior space of the work for the viewer to enter. In the 1970s, Ferber continued his exploration of abstract form, mostly in large-scale outdoor pieces. Ferber's works have appeared the Metropolitan, the Modern, and Whitney museums in New York and in Europe. His longest-term art dealer was M. Knoedler & Co., who exhibited Ferber's last living show in September 1990. Solo exhibitions: According to the Herbert Ferber Estate, 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, 1943) * Lorenzelli Arte, Milan (1988) *

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

(2019–20) * Samuel Kootz Gallery (1955, 1957) * Tanglewood (1978) * Walker Art Center (1962) * Whitney Museum of American Art (1961, 1963) Group exhibitions: According to the Herbert Ferber Estate, 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 The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, is an art museum at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, in Delaware Park. the museum's Elmwood Avenue campus is temporarily closed for construction. It hosted e ...

(Buffalo, New York) *

Cantor Arts Center The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, formerly the Stanford University Museum of Art, and commonly known as the Cantor Arts Center, is an art museum on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. ...

(Stanford University, Palo Alto, California) *

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Art ...

(Dallas, Texas) *

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single col ...

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

(Washington, D. C.) * Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase College, Purchase, New York) *

Newark Museum The Newark Museum of Art (formerly known as the Newark Museum), in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, United States, is the state's largest museum. It holds major collections of American art, decorative arts, contemporary art, and arts of Asia, Af ...

(Newark, New Jersey) *

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Saint Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, Mi ...

(St. Louis, Missouri) *

(New York City) *

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

(New Haven, Connecticut) * Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection (Albany, New York) *

The Jewish Museum The Jewish Museum is an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the former Felix M. Warburg House, along Museum Mile on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The first Jewish museum in the Unit ...

(New York) Works online: * 1930: **
Turrets
**

**

* 1931:

* 1950: **
Game No. 2
**
The Bow
* 1955-6:

* 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)

References

External links

Herbert Ferber Estate

United States Department of State - Herbert Ferber

Library of Congress - The sculpture of Herbert Ferber retrospective 1932 through 1962

Smithsonian: Oral history interview with Herbert Ferber
(1968-1969)
Guggenheim: Herbert Ferber

* Photos of Ferber: *

(1950) *
Herbert Ferber by Lenore Seroka
(1980) *
Herbert Ferber by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
(1981) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ferber, Herbert 1906 births 1991 deaths Modern sculptors 20th-century American painters American male painters Sculptors from New York (state) Jewish American artists Abstract expressionist artists Jewish sculptors 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American male artists American male sculptors Sculptors Guild members Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (New York City) alumni 20th-century American Jews