Robert Engman (April 29, 1927 – July 4, 2018)
The Philadelphia Inquirer (July 18, 2018) Retrieved 2020-03-19 was an American sculptor with works in the permanent collection of the

Hirshhorn Museum The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desi ...

,''Robert Engman Sculptures,''
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Retrieved 2020-3-20 MOMA, 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 (1875–194 ...

, numerous college museums, and private collections.

Early life

Engman was born in 1927 to parents who had emigrated from Sweden. He joined the Navy at the age of 15, serving in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

in the Pacific. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA, and from Yale University with an MFA in Painting and in Sculpture (1955), where he studied with sculptor José de Rivera and

Josef Albers Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College ...

. Albers wrote of him: “Only a few independent ones were courageous enough to concentrate on the plane—the in-between of volume and line—as a broad sculptural concept and promise.”

Career

The Yale Years: 1953-1964

Engman taught sculpture at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

, and, in 1960, was appointed director of Yale's sculpture program in its Graduate School of Fine Arts. He worked closely with

James Rosati James Rosati (1911 in Washington, Pennsylvania 1911 – 1988 in New York City) was an American abstract sculptor. He is best known for creating an outdoor sculpture in New York: a stainless steel ''Ideogram.'' Life Born near Pittsburgh, R ...

, Ann Lehman, and Paul Rudolph, and produced his monumental work, ''Column,'' (1963) for Rudolph's new building for the Yale Art & Architecture program. Represented by Arthur and Madeleine Lejwa's influential Galerie Chalette in New York, his work attracted the attention of

Joseph Hirshhorn Joseph Herman Hirshhorn (August 11, 1899 – August 31, 1981) was an entrepreneur, financier, and art collector. Biography Born in Mitau, Latvia, the twelfth of thirteen children, Hirshhorn emigrated to the United States with his widowed moth ...

, who began to actively collect Engman's sculptures.

Philadelphia and the Grand Scale: 1964-1978

In 1964, Engman moved to Pennsylvania, where he became director of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

's graduate studies in sculpture. He was a frequent visiting critic at East Coast schools of art during his teaching career. In the 1960s and '70s, his career flourished, with successful New York gallery shows and larger and larger scale commissions, culminating in ''Triune,''(1975) a 20-foot-high structure of interlocking bronze curves.

Haverford: the Private Studio: After 1978

The physical effort required to complete ''Triune'' brought a check to Engman's artistic drive to "dominate the materials." In 1978, he changed his approach to art. With rare exceptions, Engman eschewed the

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. ...

approach to sculpture, preferring to personally construct his pieces. He retreated from the world of large-scale commissions, and began work on a series of more intimately-scaled pieces that did not require a workshop of helpers to complete.

Theory of Sculpture

The sinuous curves of Engman's work are derived from the artist’s explorations of

minimal surfaces In mathematics, a minimal surface is a surface that locally minimizes its area. This is equivalent to having zero mean curvature (see definitions below). The term "minimal surface" is used because these surfaces originally arose as surfaces tha ...

to generate sculptural form. Minimal surfaces are mathematically the most economical connections between loops or lines in three-dimensional space. Engman created assemblages of minimal surface configurations to form geometrically-based sculptures that could, at the time of their production, be described mathematically only ''after'' they had been physically created in metal or wood. In Engman's own words, "they cannot be conceived of through any other system than that of the giving of substance to thought." Others have been fascinated with the science and mathematics of such surfaces, including the late R. Buckminster Fuller.

Works

*''A Study in Growth,'' (1958) in the MOMA permanent collection. *Engman's work in the

Hirshhorn Hirschhorn is derived from German composite word "Hirsch" (deer) and "Horn" (horn), part of a deer's antlers. A variation is Hirshhorn. It may refer to: * Hirschhorn (Neckar), a town in Hesse, Germany * Hirschhorn, Rhineland-Palatinate, a municip ...

is represented by two large scale pieces, ''Untitled,'' (1968-1969), and ''After Iyengar'' (1978), and upwards of thirty of his smaller works. *Works in the

Whitney Whitney may refer to: Film and television * ''Whitney'' (2015 film), a Whitney Houston biopic starring Yaya DaCosta * ''Whitney'' (2018 film), a documentary about Whitney Houston * ''Whitney'' (TV series), an American sitcom that premiered i ...

: ''Construction,'' (1960), ''Moon, Number 2,'' (1964).''Moon, Number 2,'' Robert Engman, (1964)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Accession: 65.7. *His largest sculpture, ''Triune'' (1975), continues to stand at the southwest corner of

Philadelphia City Hall Philadelphia City Hall is the seat of the municipal government of the City of Philadelphia. Built in the ornate Second Empire style, City Hall houses the chambers of the Philadelphia City Council and the offices of the Mayor of Philadelphia. ...

. *''Kings'' (1975) is at 78th and Lindbergh Streets, also in Philadelphia. *Students collaborated with Engman to create the ''

Peace Symbol A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians and then eventually became a secular peace symbol, popularized by a ''Dove'' lithograph b ...

'' (1967) sculpture which was installed in front of the Van Pelt Library at Penn in 1983. MIT Barker Library.jpg, ''Untitled'' (1968), suspended inside the Great Dome at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

Tiune Engman.JPG, ''Triune'' (1975), near

Peace symbol Penn.JPG, ''Peace Symbol'' (1967) was created in collaboration with Penn students Peace symbol Penn Detail.JPG, ''Peace Symbol, detail'' (1967)

Exhibitions (not complete)

Group

:''Recent Sculpture U.S.A'' (May - Aug 1959) MOMA, New York, NY :''Structured Sculpture'' (1960), Galerie Chalette, New York, NY :''Modern Sculpture from the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Collection'' (Oct 1962 - Jan 1963),

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

, New York, NY :''Annual Exhibition 1966: Contemporary Sculpture and Prints'' (Dec 1966 - Feb 1967),

, New York, NY

Solo

:''Recent Sculpture'' (Feb - Mar 1960),

Stable Gallery The Stable Gallery, originally located on West 58th Street in New York City, was founded in 1953 by Eleanor Ward. The Stable Gallery hosted early solo New York exhibitions for artists including Marisol Escobar, Robert Indiana and Andy Warhol. His ...

, New York, NY :''Shifting the Limits: Robert Engman’s Structural Sculpture'' (Oct 2016 - Feb 2017), James A. Michener Art Museum,

Doylestown, PA Doylestown is a borough and the county seat of Bucks County in Pennsylvania, United States. It is located northwest of Trenton, north of Center City, Philadelphia, southeast of Allentown, and southwest of New York City. As of the 2020 cen ...

References

External links

* Dennet, Scot
''Bob Engman in the Studio''
Denett Entertainment (2015) Retrieved 2020-04-14. * Cook, Bonnie L.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Engman, Robert 1927 births 2018 deaths Rhode Island School of Design alumni Yale School of Art alumni Yale University faculty University of Pennsylvania faculty People from Belmont, Massachusetts Sculptors from Massachusetts United States Navy personnel of World War II 20th-century American sculptors American male sculptors 20th-century American male artists