ARTIST BIO.
Claire Falkenstein, a West-coast-born artist, spent a large portion of her career living and working in California. Born in 1908, she began her formal training in art at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received a BA in sculpture, philosophy, and anthropology. Her unconventional approach to art allowed her to experiment in painting and sculpture using various mediums from ceramics to metal. This unique combination of study using interdisciplinary methods to explore materials became a hallmark for further investigation into new art styles.
In 1950, Falkenstein departed for Paris, where she spent a decade interacting with artists from the European avant-garde. Artists such as Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometto explored existentialist philosophy or the idea that individuals have the choice to circumvent societal norms to create a new way of being or a self-made existence. She also explored Einstein’s theory of physics and the ground-breaking notions of the plasticity of time and space. These philosophical ideas in post-war Europe fanned out to include broader questions about the nature of the universe.
In the late 1950s, Falkenstein developed a signature style using copper tubing to create her first Point as a Set sculpture. Upon returning to the United States in 1960, she continued to work on this series, which included 41 sculptures over 25 years. On the whole, Point as a Set uses short-shaped and bent copper tubes to produce large- and small-scale works. These smaller tubes always come together as a sum of a larger whole.
Claire Falkenstein with some of her sculptures Archives of American Art, c. 1970. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Washington, DC.
Claire Falkenstein holding one of her sculptures.
In mathematics, the term ‘point-set’ is a way to describe the ‘topology’ of an object. Topology is “the study of geometric properties and spatial relations unaffected by the continuous change of shape or size of figures” (Oxford Dictionary). This description aptly applies to Falkenstein’s Point as a Set sculptures, which emphasize the flow of space and the fluidity of her morphing objects.