Di Suvero was born in Shanghai in 1933 to Italian parents who had moved to China three years earlier. Early in 1941 the family sailed to San Francisco. While a philosophy major in college (San Francisco City College, U.C. Santa Barbara and U.C. Berkeley) he became interested in sculpture and worked intensively in that medium (primarily large rough wooden beams) after moving to New York in 1957. Three years later he was severely crushed in an accident and was confined to a wheelchair for the next two years and perforce worked in small scale and more and more with metal and combinations of wood and metal. Beginning in the mid-1960's he frequently incorporated movement into his sculptures. In the early 1970's he moved to Europe, then returned to San Francisco.
Shadowframe is composed of two parts: (1) a base made of a pierced I-beam element with twisted steel forms welded to it and surmounted by a long sharp point and (2) a more complex balancing element which implies an open cube flanked by a flat, pierced, curvilinear form on one side and a bar which twists itself into a knot on the other.
Source: Bulletin, July-August 1976.
Exhibition History"The Abstract Tradition in American Art," Des Moines Art Center, Dec. 7, 1991 - Feb. 23, 1992
"Selected Works from the Des Moines Art Center's Permanent Collection," organized and circulated by the Waterloo Municipal Galleries, sponsored by the National Bank of Waterloo, Oct. 24 - Nov. 20, 1983, (circulated to: Charles H. MacNider Museum, Mason City, Jan. 15 - Feb. 26, 1984; Muscatine Art Center, Apr. 1 - May 13, 1984; Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, May 27 - July 1, 1984; Sioux City Art Center, July 15 - Aug. 26, 1984)
"American Museum - An Experience in Community," organized by the International Communication Agency, Washington, D.C., (circulated to: Bucharest, Romania, Oct. 13 - Nov. 1, 1981; Museum of Art, Cluf-Napoca, Romania, May 25 - June 13, 1982; Shipka Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria, July 27 - Aug. 19, 1982)
"Contemporary American Art from Upper Midwest Collections," Vice-Presidential Residence, Washington, D.C., special loan to home of Walter and Joan Mondale, 1978
"Mark di Suvero," Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y., Nov. 13, 1975 - Feb. 8, 1976
Published ReferencesDMAC Bulletin, July/Aug. 1976, cover ill.
"Selected Works from the Des Moines Art Center's Permanent Collection," Waterloo Municipal Galleries, IA, 1983, exh. cat. no.10
DES MOINES ART CENTER: SELECTED PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES AND WORKS ON PAPER, Des Moines Art Center, 1985, ref. pp.61 & 62, b/w ill. p.61
THE NATHAN EMORY COFFIN COLLECTION, a portfolio of fifty selections from the collection, pub. by the Des Moines Art Center in 1981 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Nathan Emory Coffin, b/w illus.
Other (Base): 59 lb. (26.8 kg.)
Other (Top): 45 lb. (20.4 kg.)
