Open Form

Sculpture built from lines, planes and gaps rather than solid mass, so that empty space becomes part of the form.

No works indexed yet · 10 related artists

No open-access works for Open Form are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.

About

Traditional sculpture carved or modelled a closed volume. Open form turns this inside out, drawing in space with rods, sheets and wire so that the air through and around them is shaped as much as the material. The approach took hold in the 1910s and 1920s. Russian Constructivists hung spatial constructions from the ceiling, and Naum Gabo used transparent plastics and later nylon thread to define volumes without enclosing them, as in Linear Construction in Space No. 1 (1942–43).

In Paris, Julio González taught Pablo Picasso to weld iron around 1928, and González's own Woman Combing Her Hair (c. 1931) is made of strips and voids. Alexander Calder's wire portraits and mobiles set line in motion. After 1945 David Smith welded steel into open, drawing-like pieces, and Richard Lippold strung wire into glinting webs. Walk around such works: silhouettes change at every step, and light and shadow complete the object.