A Life Takes Form in ‘Claire Falkenstein: Beyond Sculpture’

Rachael McDonald

A renaissance artist of the 20th Century, Claire Falkenstein is well known for her work as a sculptor, printmaker, painter and jewelry maker. Her determined exploration of a vast assortment of tools and media is evident in each of her works. With a dynamic balance of boldness and adept mastery of arduously studied techniques, Falkenstein’s relentless resistance against the commodification of art brought an elusiveness and an originality to her pieces that stands out vibrantly even in the spectrum of 20th-century art. Of her works large and small, she often found a way to blend elegant aesthetic abstraction and function. With her vigorous and playful experimentation of 3D space, Falkenstein’s large-scale glass and metal public sculptures rest at the forefront of her body of work.

Alongside her dedicated exploration of a vast array of media and techniques, Falkenstein was also a fervent explorer of centers of metropolitan art and culture. Spending the span of her career living in San Francisco, Paris, New York and Los Angeles, Falkenstein’s life and work can be traced throughout the different cities she resided in throughout her multilayered career. Her grand architectural works remain in several art metropolises as well including Falkenstein’s most famous work “The Gates of Paradise,” a massive webbed metal entryway to the Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy. Falkenstein’s work urges its viewers to find the newness hidden within the tools and techniques that already exists and to push boundaries as we thoughtfully and playfully shape our lives in the vast world that we live in.

The Pasadena Museum of Art brings us a retrospective of Falkenstein’s work deliberately brought together in a way that mirrors her own constructive creativity; tracing her work both chronologically and geographically reveals to us the shape that Falkenstein’s life has taken. By presenting her work through this lens, the Pasadena Museum of California Art reveals to us the true scope of Falkenstein’s life and work.

“Claire Falkenstein: Beyond Sculpture” will be on view from April 17 through Sept. 11 at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.