Snake, 1990

Joel Shapiro, the contemporary New York born sculptor, has spent several decades in developing a career which is notable for his unique understanding of space, shape and colour. His concepts embodied in numerous small or large-scale creations, have awakened the artistic world to the power of dynamic displays, many of which are kept in prized museum collections or are exhibited proudly around the work.

Loved as an artwork creator and respected as an innovator, Joel Shapiro, had experimented with bronze as well as with natural or painted wood in bold and imaginative way, producing the distinctively angular shapes of his sculptures and crafting their instantly recognizable look - simultaneously raw-boned and energetic.

Joel Shapiro’s installations – unframed, in natural or bright colors, are sometimes positioned off the surface of the floors or walls, configured in a way that projects them in the air vigorously and with a confident sense of movement. Shapiro plays with the simplicity of geometric outlines to create his imagery of figures balanced on their edges, almost never firmly attached to the ground. One of his Joel Shapiro’s famous works, Loss and Regeneration, a two-part bronze installation in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, communicates powerfully the destruction of family lives via the cubic form of a house turned almost upside down on its roof. A tall, soaring figure positioned some distance away from the house connects the image of fall with one of rebirth – a formidable sculptural dialogue in the visual style Shapiro has developed and mastered so perfectly.