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Maker(s):Bauermeister, Mary
Culture:American (born Germany 1934 - 2023)
Title:Eighteen Rows
Date Made:1962-1968
Type:Sculpture
Materials:pebbles and epoxy on linen covered board
Place Made:Italy; Sicily and United States
Measurements:overall: 17 5/8 x 17 3/4 x 2 7/8 in.; 44.7675 x 45.085 x 7.3025 cm
Narrative Inscription:  signed and dated on verso: M. Bauermeister 1962 - 68
Accession Number:  SC 1972.42.1
Credit Line:Gift of Dorothy C. Miller (Mrs. Holger Cahill), class of 1925
Museum Collection:  Smith College Museum of Art
1972_42_1.jpg

Description:
gradually increasing layered rows of pebbles of graduated sizes glued to 3/4 in. linen covered board; abstract

Label Text:
A member of an avant-garde circle of musicians, artists, and intellectuals in postwar Germany, Mary Bauermeister came to the United States in 1962 and spent a decade working in New York. Interested since childhood in the mathematical principles behind natural processes, Bauermeister often used natural materials such as sand, stones, or honeycombs in her early work and after coming to this country.

Bauermeister’s “stone pictures” are an example of a chance find of natural objects. Fascinated by the shapes and colors of flat stones she first discovered on a beach in Sicily in 1962, the artist began collecting and experimenting with them, stacking the stones in “towers” of graduated sizes on panels.

As the artist has said of her work:
"I am not beautifying or celebrating matter even if I work with stones. Of course I let them express themselves as material, but it is always a principle of order which they follow, a principle of geometry or cosmic order along which, for example, the growth of plants or minerals happens. These are thought-forms in matter."

Tags:
abstract; mathematics

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1972.42.1

Research on objects in the collections, including provenance, is ongoing and may be incomplete. If you have additional information or would like to learn more about a particular object, please email fc-museums-web@fivecolleges.edu.

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