DI SUVERO, MARC

DI SUVERO, MARC, b. China, 1933, and Mark di Suvero, born Marco Polo di Suvero September 18, 1933 in Shanghai to Italian parents, is an American artist who welds scrap metal into monumental sculptures. Di Suvero’s family immigrated to San Francisco after the onset of World War II, and he went on to attend the San Francisco City College and UC Berkeley. Moving to New York in 1957, during his early years as an artist he worked in construction, and brushed elbows with Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg. He built dynamic sculptures that matched the paintings of the Abstract Expressionists in exuberance and size. His early works were large outdoor pieces that incorporated wooden timbers from demolition buildings, tires, scrap metal and structural steel. Often visually off-balance and asymmetrical, Di Suvero's works lend themselves to the idea that they are "drawings in space" and related to the gestural abstraction that became prevalent during the mid-20th century. No matter how large or heavy his sculptures are, Di Suvero often allows a certain degree of motion to be possible within the finished works. The moving elements, while heavy because of their industrial materials, are meant to give the illusion of ease and suspending gravity. Furthermore, Di Suvero is a politically committed artist: in 1966 he designed the fifty-five-foot-high Peace Tower (now destroyed) in Los Angeles as a protest against the war in Vietnam. Soon after, he left the United States for several years, in voluntary exile, “DI SUVERO, MARC,” UCSB ADA Museum Omeka, accessed April 18, 2024, http://art-collections.museum.ucsb.edu/items/show/4703.