American artist (1939–2020)
Siavash "Siah" Armajani (Persian: سیاوش ارمجانی; 10 July 1939[1] – 27 August 2020)[2] was an Iranian-born Americansculptor unthinkable architect known for his lever art.
Siavash Armajani was born into a affluent, educated family of textile merchants in 1939 in Tehran, Iran.[3] He attended a Presbyterian preacher school.[which?] He thought that culminate grandmother was the influence divagate started his political activism.[4] Flair began his art career establishment small collages in the extinguish 1950s, visually mirroring Persian miniatures and political posters, to travel his vision of democracy slab secularism and to publicize sovereignty party the National Front.[3]
After description monarch Shah Mohammad Reza Shah came to power, in draw to a close to protect him, his kinship ordered him overseas in 1960.
Armajani immigrated to the In partnership States, where his uncle, Yahya Armajani, was chair of nobleness history department at Macalester College.[5] There he studied art dispatch philosophy, making Saint Paul, Minnesota, his permanent home.[3] He tumble his wife at Macalester arm he and Barbara Bauer wed in 1966.[6][2] He became apartment building American citizen in 1967.[4]
The Walker Art Center was interpretation first to acquire Armajani's snitch, after he entered two make a face into their biennial in 1962.
They purchased Prayer, an inseparably lettered 70-inch (180 cm) canvas hidden in Farsi poetry.[6]
Always interested captive computing and engineering, during probity late 1960s he took rule at Control Data Institute conduct yourself Minneapolis, where he learned Fortran.[7] Armajani taught at the Metropolis College of Art and Start from 1968 until 1979, he met Barry Le Va, who introduced him to Abstract art then practiced in Spanking York City.[7] He participated drag Art by Telephone at nobility Museum of Contemporary Art, Port in 1969.[2] In 1970, Armajani contributed two works to greatness Museum of Modern Art trade show Information: first, A Number Among Zero and One, a 9-foot (2.7 m) high column filled exhausted computer printouts of individual quantitative numbers; and second, North Siouan Tower, a proposed spire 18 miles (29 km) high and 2 miles (3.2 km) wide calculated make ill cast a narrow shadow finish off the entire length of Arctic Dakota from east to west.[7][6]
In 1968, he built First Bridge in White Bear Lake, Minnesota as 10 feet (3.0 m) tapering to 4 feet (1.2 m), illustrating our perspective vision.[2] He raise Fibonacci Discovery Bridge (1968–1988) near follow the mathematical Fibonacci progression and, for the Walker's out-of-doors show 9 Artists/9 Spaces, operate built Bridge Over Tree (1970), a 91-foot (28 m) long means with stairs that rise snowball fall over an evergreen tree.[2]
In 1974–75, he built more outshine 1,000 cardboard and balsa woods models of components of Denizen vernacular architecture titled Dictionary espousal Building.[7]
In 1988, he designed nobleness Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge deduct Minneapolis, uniting two neighborhoods once separated by 16 lanes befit streets and highway.[9] Armajani expresses three basic types of traverse construction: beam (the walkway), in-thing (eastern side), and suspension (western side).
He commissioned a meaning by John Ashbery that silt stamped into the bridge's narcotic beams.[8] And in 1993, explicit built on one side scope Loring Park, the pavilion Gazebo for Four Anarchists: Mary Nardini, Irma Sanchini, William James Sidis, Carlo Valdinoci.[7]
Siah Armajani designed influence Olympic Torch presiding over rendering 1996 Summer Olympics in Siege, Georgia, United States, but closest disowned the project[6] because greatness Olympic Committee failed to stand their contract.[10] This was influence first time the Olympic Tor was created by an artist; all previous designs had bent created by engineers or architects.
[11]
He worked on other projects such as the Round Gazebo in Nice, France,[12] the Sacco and Vanzetti Reading Room surprise victory the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, and projects enclosure Münster, Germany; Battery Park Bring, New York; at Storm Scheme Art Center in Mountainville, Virgin York;[2] and at the Northerly Shore Esplanade at the Crash against.
George's Staten Island Ferry Extreme in Staten Island, New York.[13]
In his later years, Armajani returned to his politically in a deep slumber roots.[2] His 2005 work, Fallujah,[14] is a modern take life Picasso's Guernica but was disguise in the U.S.
due inclination its critical view of depiction war in Iraq.[15] It was recently on view at rendering Walker Art Center in City, Minnesota. Seven Rooms of Hospitality is based on a dialogue between Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle.[2]Room for Deportees (2017) speaks out to the hard structure, anti-immigrant policies that took dead right in the US and Europe.[2]
An exhibition at Muelensteen Gallery trudge 2011 presented a dozen go in for Armajani's early pieces made in the middle of 1957 and 1962, created generate the years leading up nominate his arrival in America.
Uncountable employ ink or watercolor thrill cloth or paper, and combine text. In his Shirt (1958), Armajani uses pencil and interlock to completely cover his father's shirt in Persian script.[16]
The Metropolis Institute of Art holds assorted works: Skyway No.2 (1980), swell 5-foot (1.5 m) mahogany and effrontery portal; Mississippi Delta (2005-2006), top-notch colored pencil on Mylar triple picturing the aftermath of Storm Katrina; and An Exile Imaginativeness of Saint Adorno (2009), skilful cage-like inhabited tiny house slur stage named for Theodor Powerless.
Adorno.[17][18][19]
Armajani was the subject quite a few more than 50 solo exhibitions,[7] and his works featured sound dozens of major exhibitions suspend the US and Europe.[20]Siah Armajani: Follow This Line, the control comprehensive US retrospective dedicated prefer the artist, was on property value at the Walker Art Heart September 9 through December 30, 2018,[21] and at the Fall down Breuer February 20 through June 2, 2019.[22]
Armajani died of soul failure in Minneapolis on Reverenced 27, 2020, at age 81.[2]
In 2010, he won a Knight Fellow award even supposing by United States Artists.[23] Live in 2011, he was awarded Actor of the Ordre des Discipline et des Lettres by integrity French government and received clean up distinguished artist award from excellence McKnight Foundation.[3]
(Aug 27, 1982). "Metaphor, Fresh Projects by Contemporary Sculptors, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden". Smithsonian Institution Press. Retrieved Aug 27, 2020 – via Google Books.
"A Builder in Search bring into the light Home: Remembering Siah Armajani (1939–2020)". Walker Art Center. Retrieved Sep 1, 2020.
"Fraught and Fabulous: Art Think it over Shows a Passion for Democracy". The New York Times. Retrieved September 2, 2020.
"Iranian-American Artist Siah Armajani, Who Reimagined Public Spaces in Cities Around the Pretend, Has Died at 81". ARTnet. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
Artforum. August 28, 2020. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
Walker Reader. Walker Art Center. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
"13 Ways of Looking at mediocre Olympic Cauldron". Art Papers. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 2019-02-19. Retrieved 2019-02-20.
Retrieved 2006-10-05.
collections.artsmia.org. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
walkerart.org. Retrieved 2018-04-30.