plate III from "Struttura Grafica" portfolio

Claire Falkenstein

Claire Falkenstein (1908-1997) studied at Atelier 17 with S.W. Hayter where she learned experimental printmaking. She is highly regarded as a painter/printmaker but is also noted for her metal sculpture and jewelry. She would often "print" both, using the sculptural elements as the matrix.

"Struttura Grafica Portfolio" consisted of eleven relief prints (collagraphs), with title page, text by Michel Tapie, published by Giorgio Upiglio / Edizioni D'Arte Grafica Uno, Milan. The portfolio was published in a clamshell box decorated by an original copper relief sculpture.

This work is from the suite of collagraphs, Struttura Grafico, printed with Italian master printmaker Giorgio Upiglio at his Grafica Uno shop in Milan. For this portfolio the artist pressed paper over both fabricated and found sculptural objects that were attached to a plate, in this case a metal wire scupture, the background surface was printed with subtle gray-green ink, the embossed sculptural area did not print. The second image is a scan of the back of the paper showing how deeply embossed the matrix printed.

As with her three dimensional sculptures in metal, wood, and clay, Claire Falkenstein’s “Struttura Graphica, Plate III” is a study in suspension, spatial relation, and the beauty found in delicate balance. Deeply embossed shapes, geometric and sturdy, are gathered within a circular matrix to create a tumbleweed of energy on the sheet.

After printing the embossed area, Falkenstein printed a square of gray/green ink on the thick, hand made C.M. Fabriano wove paper in order to emphasize the disruption of its surface. In the second image, the viewer can observe the thick, toothy texture of the paper rising upward, dipping downward, and expanding outward. Falkenstein’s relatively limited output of dimensional works on paper nevertheless made an impact on the art world’s perception of the medium’s possibilities.

Claire Falkenstein, sculptor, painter, printmaker, jewelry maker, and teacher, was born in Coos Bay, Oregon on 22 July 1908. She moved to Berkeley, California with her family in 1920. At the University of California Berkeley, she studied anthropology, philosophy, and art, receiving her bachelor’s degree in 1930. That same year her first solo exhibition opened at the East-West Gallery in San Francisco.

Falkenstein’s only formal training in sculpture was in a class at Mills College conducted by the sculptor, Alexander Archipenko, during the summer of 1933. Throughout her career, she explored the possibilities of clay, wood, sheet metal, wire, plastic, glass, and copper tubing. She made her first prints in 1940 during Stanley William Hayter’s summer course at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

Falkenstein taught drawing at Mills College from 1945 to 1948 and was appointed to the faculty of the California School of Fine Arts in the fall of 1947 where she met and made friends with many of the Bay Area Abstract Expressionists. Falkenstein visited Paris in 1950 and decided to stay, opening her studio on the Left Bank. In Paris, she worked on her metal sculpture and developed experimental collagraphs at Atelier 17. While in Europe, Falkenstein created several large-scale commissions, including the railing of the Galleria Spazio in Rome and the gates of the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in Venice, which houses the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

She returned to United States in 1962, settling in Venice, California and focused her energies on large site sculptures, which included the monumental sculpture for the fountain of the California Federal Savings corporate headquarters in Los Angeles. Falkenstein was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978.

Claire Falkenstein died in Venice, California on 23 October 1997.