LIVING OUT LOUD
Wendell Castle
June 2010, Zurich
In giving the American Wendell Castle the “Lifetime Achievement Award“ in 2007, the Brooklyn Museum has honored an exceptional design artist, whose innovative and influential work has been a constant source of impulses to design history since the 1960s. Often credited as the father of the American studio furniture movement, his work has continuously evolved, from these early experimentations to his more recent forays into metal, wood and concrete and pioneering use of both stack-lamination as well as fiberglass. In order to create exciting sculptural relationships, Castle has always been seeking out refined methods of fabrication and qualitative improvements and thus radically altered the immediate aesthetic, production, and potentialities for furniture design.
Wendell Castle was born in Emporia (Kansas, USA) in 1932. He graduated from the University of Kansas with his B.F.A. in Industrial Design and M.F.A. in sculpture in 1961. In the sixties, he moved to Rochester, New York, where he still lives and works as artist in residence at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Wendell Castle has received numerous commendations, awards and honors in his long unfolding career.
