Installation view of John Chamberlain: Early Years at L&M Arts in New York, 2009

John Chamberlain

During his long and noteworthy career, John Chamberlain created large scale sculptures out of scrap metal auto parts, aiming to render the dynamism of abstract expressionism in three dimensions. Born in Rochester, Indiana, in 1927, the artist studied at The Art Institute of Chicago and Black Mountain College, North Carolina. He began to exhibit widely after moving to New York, participating in the 1973 and 1987 Whitney Biennials and Documenta VII (1982) in Kassel. Chamberlain’s work has been exhibited in over one hundred solo museum shows, including retrospectives at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1971, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 1986, and again posthumously at the Guggenheim the year after the artist passed away in 2011. His sculptures may be found in several museum collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Menil Collection, Houston, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Exhibitions