Richard Lippold

American sculptor Richard Lippold (1915-2002) was a renowned artist, responsible for some of the most important site-specific architectural sculptures created in the last half of the Twentieth Century. His work is primarily composed of large, geometric and highly complex wire and sheet metal. He achieved startling effects in intricately arranged, precisely engineered constructions, exploring spatial relationships with the surrounding architecture.

Lippold’s reputation for collaborating with architects has won him high praise from major architects of his time such as Walter Gropius and Philip Johnson. Walter Gropius once said: "All my life I have tried to cooperate with painters and sculptors to create works to be at one with buildings; Lippold is the only one whose work comes to one with our buildings. The only one." (The New Yorker, March 30, 1963).

Richard Lippold was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 3, 1915. From 1933 to 1937 he studied Industrial Design at the University of Chicago and received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago while studying Music and Modern Dance.

Upon graduating, he freelanced as Industrial Designer and taught at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor where he began to work in wire sculpture. In 1942 he moved to New York City to pursue his interest in the emerging artistic developments of the time.

From 1945 to 1947 he taught at Goddard College in Vermont and had his first public showing at the St. Louis Museum and at the Detroit Institute of Art. In 1947 he had his first one-man show at the Willard Gallery in New York. Pioneer art dealer Marion Willard was the first to represent the works of Mr. Lippold as well as those of Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, David Smith, among others. Peggy Guggenheim, Blanchette Rockefeller and Alfred Barr were also great admirers and supporters of Mr. Lippold’s work.

These years marked the beginning of an intense creativity and an extensive exhibition record in the U.S. and abroad. Because of his innovative approach to sculpture, in 1948 he was invited by Josef Albert to Black Mountain College (North Carolina) where he worked with Jasper Jones, Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Kenneth Snelson, Ray Johnson and others.

Richard Lippold was considered an important figure among first generation New York School artists and was one of the few sculptors to take his place alongside such venerated painters as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Adolf Gottlieb, Mark Rothko and others of the Abstract Expressionist movement. His works were represented at the 1947 and 1948 Whitney Annuals and at the 1951 Sao Paulo Art Biennial in Brazil.

In 1950 his Variation Within a Sphere #7 “Full Moon” was exhibited at the Willard Gallery, instantly becoming the most talked about sculpture of the time. As art historian Edward Lucie-Smith said: “His sculpture in fact lies at the very center of the history of American modernism. Full Moon was for a long time one of the most famous of all American Twentieth Century sculptures. It was placed so as to form a kind of culminating point to any visit made to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, then as now America's chief shrine to the Modern movement.”

Alfred Barr, founder of MoMA, considered Full Moon one of the most important works in their collection and in 1957 he loaned it to the Musee du Louvre in Paris for the exhibition titled “Cinquante ans d’art aux Etats-Unis”, receiving glowing reviews and major articles in L’Oeil magazine by Rosamond Bernier.

Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, gave Mr. Lippold his first commission, a 30 foot high outdoor sculpture for the Graduate Law Center at Harvard University in 1950. Gropius’s buildings and Lippold’s sculpture are now landmarks.

In 1952 he was included along with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still in “Fifteen Americans”', an exhibit curated by Dorothy Miller for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In 1953 the Metropolitan Museum of Art commissioned Mr. Lippold a sculpture titled Variation Within a Sphere #10 “The Sun”, made with two miles of 22kt gold wires, dazzling and awe inspiring. When unveiled in 1956 it created a sensation in the art world, establishing Mr. Lippold’s reputation as a unique master of Twentieth Century art. This was the first commission ever made by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

With his stature in American art secured, Lippold’s work was displayed in the Museum of Modern Art's famous exhibition titled "Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America" (1957) curated by Andrew C. Ritchie. During this period he also wrote several articles for major art publications.

1959 was an exceptional year for Mr. Lippold. He was commissioned two sculptures for Seagram’s Building Four Seasons Restaurant in New York, designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. The building and sculptures are prominent New York City’s landmarks, an iconic collaboration between art and architecture. The same year he created a work for Giancarlo Menotti’s Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds in Italy and a striking sculpture for the Musee du Vin in Pauillac, France, in addition to the wine label commissioned by Baronne Pauline and Baron Philippe de Rothschild for their 1959 Chateaux Mouton Rothschild. Lippold was the first American artist to design the wine label, a tradition now widely imitated by other artists.

In 1962 Orpheus & Apollo, a 190 foot long sculpture, was installed in the Grand Foyer of Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) at Lincoln Center, commissioned by the building architect Max Abramovitz. In 1963 Juan Terry Trippe, founder of Pan Am Airways, commissioned Flight for its headquarters (now Met Life Building).

On May 22, 1963, Mr. Lippold was elected as the youngest member at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, along with architects I.M.Pei, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, Buckminister Fuller and artists Georgia O’Keefe, Thomas Hart Benton, Jacques Lipchitz and Leonard Baskin, among others.

In 1965 a spectacular two-form sculpture was installed in the Foyer of Jesse Jones Hall for the Performing Arts in Houston, Texas, designed by Caudill, Rowlett & Scott (now CRS Sirrine). In 1967 Lippold installed a twelve story high Baldacchino for Saint Mary Cathedral in San Francisco, designed by famed Italian architect and engineer Pier Luigi Nervi.

Winner of prestigious prizes and awards throughout this period, and exhibiting his latest creations at the Willard Gallery and at several museums, in 1975 he completed a free-standing twelve stories high sculpture for the Atrium of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, designed by John Portman. The same year, Mr. Lippold created in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, an intimate sculpture commissioned by H.K.S. in memory of the late King Faisal.

In 1976 Mr. Lippold was commissioned by Moon Astronaut Mike Collins to create the tallest sculpture in Washington D.C., placed in front of the Smithsonian’s new Air and Space Museum, designed by H.O.K. and inaugurated by President Gerald Ford during the celebrations of the Unites States Bicentennial. For the opening of the Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art loaned Lippold’s Variation within a Sphere #10 “The Sun” to the Smithsonian’s Museum. This sculpture was displayed in a forty foot high area allowing visitors different and dazzling views of the artwork, magnificently floating in space, where it remained on view for eight years.

The Shabanou of Iran Farah Dhiba invited Mr. Lippold to visit Iran in 1978, commissioning five sculptures installed by the artist in prominent locations on Kish Island, in the Persian Gulf.

An impressive 20 stories high sculpture was installed in 1981 by Mr. Lippold in the Park Avenue Atrium Building in New York, designed by Edward Durell Stone’s Office. Minoru Yamasaky, architect of New York’s World Trade Center, commissioned in 1983 two sculptures from Mr. Lippold for Shinji Shumeikai, the shrine he designed near Kyoto, Japan. Next to the Shrine, architect I.M.Pei designed the Misono Bell Tower and the Miho Museum.

1985 saw the realization of major works in Virginia, Seattle, Cleveland and in Frankfurt, Germany, for the Deutsche Bank Headquarter, while the following year an amazing work was installed in the atrium of the Marina Mandarin Hotel in Singapore, in addition to the thirteen story outdoor sculpture in Seoul, South Korea. In 1987 Mr. Lippold created his last major public work for the Orange County Center for the Performing Arts in Costa Mesa, California. Titled Fire Bird, this stunning indoor-outdoor sculpture, measuring 120’ x 80’ x60’, was so successful that its design became the logo for the entire Art Center.

In 1988 Professor Luigi Carendente, director of the Venice Biennale, invited Mr. Lippold to install Ex-Stasi, a fifteen foot high sculpture, in front of the Italian Pavilion. The original model of this work has recently been requested by the Vatican Museums in Rome to be permanently displayed in their Modern Art Collection.

Richard Lippold was a truly American genius who created new innovative forms in the spirit of the Twentieth Century art, unique among his peers and still unrivaled.