Marvin Liberman

This recent work represents two paths of concern that have opened up new vocabularies for me to mine deeper fundamental roots in both sculpture and drawing.

The sculptures are made of gauze fabric: applied, formed, stabilized and painted. They are of human scale, shown under small amounts of direct light. Intimate, quiet and direct, they create a close physical relationship with the viewer, which is central to experiencing them. The work integrates painting, sculpture and illumination, three key elements of my experience.

These sculptures emerged from a probe into how human experience is marked by trauma, personal or communal, and, in enduring them, the very nature of one’s physical and emotional self is altered. They confront the viewer not with the heaviness of a mass, but a simple rippling of cloth. These works are fragile, yet they emit a presence that seems challenging, irrefutable, vital in some sense; neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but a means for understanding an essential reality.

The drawing series emerged from another probe, one related to questioning the origins of the making of line and mark, well before they evolved into language and art. For me line has a desire for freedom, and mark a will distinct t...

Education:
• School of Fine Arts, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. 1962-64
• Studies in figurative painting + drawing, École de Beaux Arts, Paris, France. 1964-65
• Studies + assistantship: Slavomir Miletič, Serbian monumental sculptor, Zaandam, The Netherlands. 1965-66
• Assistant to Idilio Santini, monumental Italian sculptor, in studio of Felix de Weldon. Washington, DC, USA. 1970-72
• Studies in fine art at Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC, USA. 1975-77

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

Liminal/Subliminal: A Procreative Space
And exhibition of 11 artists concerning the artists’ process in pursuing consciousness through the act of art making.

Elberson Fine Arts Center, Salem College, Winston Salem, North Carolina. November 20, 2015 through February, 2016. Later to be formed into traveling exhibition throughout the State of North Carolina.

AskatasunArte: From Gurs 2015
First Prize in Sculpture (purchase prize) Exhibition competition for contemporary art in relation to the concept of Art and Liberty, in tandem with honoring the history and suffering at the Gurs Concentration Camp, Gurs, France, 1939-1944.
Traveling exhibition from June 6th to Dec 31st, 2015: Gurs/Navarrenx, France; Irún, Spain; Bayonne, France; Bilbao, Spain; Guernica, Spain; Pamplona, Spain; Olorón, France, and several other possible venues.

Luces, Sombras, Diálogos (Light, Shadow, Dialogues)
19th Annual Exhibition, Mínimo Tamaño Grande Sculptors Cooperative, San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain, July 11th to July 23rd, 2015.