Herbert Ferber

(1906-1991)

One of the few Abstract Expressionist artists working in three dimensions, Herbert Ferber explored the concerns of his age in dynamic and visually interesting sculptures over the course of a career that uniquely expresses the collective artistic vocabulary at midcentury.  In a body of work that spans several decades, Ferber’s sculptural practice develops slowly and thoughtfully to incorporate elements of Surrealism, social realism, and expressionism.

After some early work with direct wood carving, Ferber moved “beyond the monolith” in the early 1940s in the form of modeled bronze. (1) This allowed the artist to explore more attenuated and expressionist form and opened up his practice to some of the Surrealist influence in which his contemporaries were also interested. This period also saw Ferber’s move into complete abstraction, his thinned forms becoming ever more like drawing in space. Drawing was in fact an important component of Ferber’s process, and several preparatory works on paper preceded each sculptural work. Drawing “enabled Ferber to loosen and open up his shapes and to free himself from a specific, literal image and move toward simplification and fluency” in sculpture. (2)

In the 1950s and 60s Ferber explored the relationship between organic and geometric line, most notably in his series of “cage” sculptures. These large-scale works featured sweeping organic forms contained within strictly rectilinear framing devices. The artist also plays with the boundaries of balance and counterbalance in sculptures both large and small. This untitled work from 1966 embodies both of these directions in Ferber’s work. The organic form of the swirling circle is interrupted by the aggressively geometric jaggedness of Ferber’s lines in space. The entire form also leans dynamically to one side, counterbalanced by the small base on which it stands.

Born in New York City in 1906, Ferber attended the City College of New York from 1923 until 1926, majoring in science while concurrently developing an interest in fine art and the humanities. He went on to study dentistry and oral surgery at Columbia University, where he received his D.D.S. While in medical school, Ferber was required to make anatomical drawings; this is where he first discovered his skill as an artist. While attending dentistry school, he also enrolled at the Beaux Arts Institute of Design from 1927 through 1930. Ferber did, in fact, work as a practicing dentist for several years and also taught dentistry part time at Columbia through the mid 1970s when he fully devoted himself to sculpture.

In the years 1930-1931, Ferber made his first woodcarvings, and by the end of 1932 he had fully come into his own within the medium. His early work was representative – often of the human form – which is likely a direct response to his anatomy drawings as a medical student. His work became increasingly more abstract as the years went on. Following his strict representational period, Ferber developed a growing concern for social causes. He work took a particularly social-realist turn with his interest in the changing social, political, and economic climate of the 1930s. It was at this same time, around 1936, that he joined a John Reed Club and the Artist’s Union. While participating in these organizations he attended talks by influential social-realist Mexican muralists José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, who were visiting New York to publicize social-realist art. However, by the late 1930s Ferber had become disillusioned with Stalinist politics and began to break away from John Reed and the Artist’s Union. Social-realist themes remained somewhat present in his work moving forward, but in a less literal manner. His first one-man show was comprised of works in wood and was held in 1937 at Midtown Gallery in New York. Before the end of the 1940s, he had given up wood as a medium, insisting that he had done all that he could with the material.

As for many American artists who spent their formative years on this side of the Atlantic, Ferber’s first trip to Europe was especially influential. In 1938 he visited a covey of churches and cathedrals in both France and Italy and was particularly influenced by Romanesque sculpture, especially that of Moissac, Souillac, and Carcassone. Between the years of 1938 and 1945, his work was heavily affected by what he termed the “false perspective” of Romanesque capitals.

As Ferber’s career progressed, he experimented more and more with different types of metal and different ways to achieve a sound structural form. For Ferber, though, materials were a matter of pragmatics. He often spoke strongly against the fetishization of materials – his greatest critique of the Bauhaus. He believed that ideas were at the heart of art