John Chamberlain

Personal

Vocation

American sculptor best known for creating sculptures from old automobiles (or parts of) that bring the Abstract Expressionist style of painting into three dimensions. He began by carving and modelling, but turned to working in metal in 1952 and welding in 1953. By 1957, while staying with the painter Larry Rivers in Southampton, New York, he began to include scrap metal from cars with his sculpture Shortstop, and from 1959 onward he concentrated on sculpture built entirely of crushed automobile parts welded together. By the end of the 1960s, Chamberlain had replaced his signature materials initially with galvanized steel, then with mineral-coated Plexiglas, and finally with aluminum foil. In 1984, Chamberlain created the monumental American Tableau for display on the Seagram Building's plaza in Manhattan, New York. Chamberlain also made abstract colour paintings from 1963, and from 1967 he made several films, such as "Wide Point" (1968) and "The Secret Life of Hernando Cortez," filmed in Mexico with Andy Warhol regulars Taylor Mead and Ultra Violet. In the last decade of his life, the artist expanded his work to large-format photographs. At the time of his death he resided and worked on Shelter Island, New York. He died on 21 December 2011, aged 84, in Manhattan, New York City. Link to Wikipedia biography