Biography from AskART:
| Jose de Rivera was an abstract-expressionis sculptor, who worked in metal. He was born Jose A. Ruiz in 1904 in West Baton Rouge, Louisiana. At age twenty he moved to Chicago and worked as a journeyman for seven years making tools, pipe fitting, and die-casting. He studied art in Chicago's Studio School with John Norton from approximately 1928 to around 1931. In 1932, de Rivera made a trip to Europe and Africa, including Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Egypt and when he returned he knew that he wanted to sculpt.
Employed by the Works Progress Administration-Federal Art Project in 1937-38, de Rivera made the aluminum, "Flight," for the Newark, New Jersey airport.
Many of de Rivera's sculptures are steel or bronze bands twisted into three-dimensional shapes. His earliest sculpture, dating from 1930, was smoothly surfaced, with elemental volumes emphasized. In 1938, with "Red and Black (Double Element)," he opened up his solid-core style by counter-posing two semi-circular aluminum sheets. Until the early 1950s, de Rivera explored the space-defining and space-enveloping qualities of bent sheet-metal, the inner and outer surfaces often painted different colors.
In the 1950s, he concentrated on forming twisting, round, stainless-steel tubes of varying thickness, and often mounted them on rotating discs so that the development of the shape can be better seen. Their gleaming surfaces reflect light, which makes them seem to dematerialize in their passage through space.
For de Rivera, "the content, beauty and source of excitement are inherent in the interdependenceof the space, material and light, which are the structure."
In 1953, he taught sculpture at Brooklyn College. De Rivera died in 1985.
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
1983
Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, November 1983.
1980
"Jose de Rivera:Sculpture Constructions",Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, November 15- December 18.
1978
"Jose de Rivera:Sculpture: Constructions", Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, October 28 - November 25.
1975
"Construction #158",Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, November 15- December 19.
1972
"Jose de Rivera: Retrospective Exhibition 1930-1971"
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Isaac Delgado Museum of American Art, New Orleans
La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla,California, February 20- April 16.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 8-June 8.
"Concurrent Exhibition- Jose de Rivera Retrospective", Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, The Whitney Museum of
American Art.
1969
"Recent Sculpture",Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York,October 4-30.
Source:
Matthew Baigell, "Dictionary of American Art"
Richard Gray Gallery, www.richardgraygallery.com
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Jose Rivera is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Abstract Expressionism
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