Contact:
Hiroko
Kikuchi
617.452.3586
hiroco@mit.edu
Working Drawings for the MIT
Bell Tower
CAMBRIDGE, MA- August, 2005. This exhibition includes
a selection of 40 verying preparatory sketches that show acclaimed sculptor,
painter, and printmaker Thodore Roszakıs many ideas for MIT
Bell Tower (1907-1981). His Bell Tower
on top of Eero Saarinenıs chapel (a brick cylinder-shaped building) at MIT is
composed of three smooth vertical thrusts rising from the encrusted arches of
the base, symbolizing the history and authority of what the artists considered
to be the three major religious persuasions at the time: Judaism, Catholicism,
and Protestantism. The drawings are from MIT List Visual Arts Centerıs
Permanent Collection.
Born in Poland in 1907, Theodore
Roszak explored both the intellectual and the aesthetic sides of industrial
materials. Roszak first became
interested in the arts in high school; he then studied at the Art Institute of
Chicago full-time from 1925 to 1926.
Influenced by American realist painters, he went to New York in 1926 to
study at the National Academy of Design and to attend classes in logic and
philosophy at Columbia University.
In 1927, he resumed study at the Art Institute of Chicago and began to
teach there. A European travel
fellowship (1929-30) provided crucial exposure to modernism, and in 1931,
Roszak began to use industrial tools. Evoking a strong industrial quality and typically painted in
primary colors, Roszakıs sculptures from this period integrated Dadaismıs
machine aesthetic with the clear, precise formal principles of constructivism.
By1946, Roszak disillusioned with
the violent use of technology in war, dramatically shifted
his style and began to create
expressionist welded, brazed metal sculptures, often of violent subjects. His later work included large drawings,
many on cosmological themes.
His work can be found in the collections of many museums, including The
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National
Gallery of Art (D.C.), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Whitney
Museum of American Art. Theodore
Roszak died in 1981 at the age of 84.
Location:
The Deanıs Gallery, the MIT Sloan School of
Management
50 Memorial Drive, Building E52
Fourth Floor, Room 466
Cambridge, MA 02139
Gallery
hours:
Monday - Friday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm;
closed all holidays.
Information
about the Deanıs Gallery:
617.253.9458 or http://web.mit.edu/deansgallery
All exhibitions at the Deanıs Gallery are free and open to the public. Wheelchair accessible.