(b Pendleton, OR, 29 June 1927). American sculptor and photographer. He initially studied drawing and painting at the Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC (1945-6), and at the University of Oregon in Eugene, OR (1946-8). In 1948 he enrolled at Black Mountain College, NC, to study art theory with Josef Albers and there met Buckminster Fuller, whose theories of structural design helped turn him from painting to sculpture. Snelson's earliest sculptures, such as Moving Sculpture (iron wire, clay and thread, 1948, reconstructed 1981; artist's priv. col., see exh. cat., p. 28), were playful, delicately balanced structures reminiscent of Alexander Calder's stabiles. Ultimately, however, Snelson was more drawn to the elegant machine aesthetic of Naum Gabo, to the monumental absolute forms of Brancusi's Endless Columns, and above all to Fuller's pioneering concepts of structural engineering. In order to better understand the physical forces of complex structures, Snelson took engineering courses at Oregon State College in 1949. He emerged with the idea of a new sculptural aesthetic based on the fundamental forces of tension and compression. While supporting himself as a cinematographer from 1952 to 1968, he experimented with an original type of sculpture in which the rigid metal elements are not connected by bolting or welding but are held in suspension by wires. After 1960 he produced his characteristic mature sculptures, for example Sun River (1967; New York, Whitney): gravity-defying, self-supporting, crystal-like structures formed of highly polished aluminium tubing, joined and suspended in space by stainless steel cables. By the late 1960s, widespread recognition brought him many commissions for such large-scale outdoor installations as the 18 m-high Needle Tower (1968; Washington, DC, Hirshhorn). Snelson is known also for photographs in an elongated format, such as East River Drive and Brooklyn Bridge (1980; see exh. cat., p. 70), in which he applied his interest in extensions into space to an examination of urban landscapes.
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