“As an artist, you are synthesizing the stuff around you in a way that engages you.”
Joel Shapiro
(b. New York, NY, 1941, d. New York, NY, 2025)
Joel Shapiro was an American artist known for his dynamic Minimalist sculptures that abstract the human form and capture a sense of movement with complex, geometric forms. Using his iconic vocabulary of geometric forms, Shapiro blurred the line between figural sculpture and geometric abstraction. In his investigations of the expressive possibility of form and color, the artist suspended elements from the ceiling, wall, and floor.
Shapiro executed more than 30 publicly sited sculptures across Asia, Europe, and North America, and was the subject of numerous one-person and retrospective exhibitions, including at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (1980); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1982); the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1985); the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1995-6); the Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2011); and the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2016). Shapiro’s work can be found in international public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Tate Gallery, London; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the French ministry of Culture named him a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters in 2005. His works can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; and the Tate Gallery, London among many other major institutions.
Shapiro lived and worked in New York City, New York.
