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Catalog Data

Creator:
Falkenstein, Claire, 1908-1997  Search this
Subject:
O'Donnell, May  Search this
Still, Patricia  Search this
Still, Clyfford  Search this
Sawyer, Kenneth B.  Search this
Guggenheim, Peggy  Search this
Green, Ray  Search this
Kuh, Katharine  Search this
Wildenhain, Frans  Search this
Tapie, Michel  Search this
Temko, Allan  Search this
Tobey, Mark  Search this
Pond Farm Workshop  Search this
Merging One Gallery  Search this
San Francisco Museum of Art  Search this
John Bolles Gallery (San Francisco, Calif.)  Search this
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts (Los Angeles, Calif.)  Search this
Martha Jackson Gallery  Search this
Malvina Miller  Search this
Los Angeles Museum of Art  Search this
Coos Art Museum  Search this
Galerie Anderson-Mayer  Search this
Galerie Stadler  Search this
Fresno Art Museum  Search this
Mills College  Search this
University of California, San Francisco. School of Fine Arts  Search this
Type:
Sketchbooks
Diaries
Scrapbooks
Interviews
Place of publication, production, or execution:
United States
Physical Description:
42.8 Linear feet
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into 9 series: Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1934-1997 (Box 1-4, 41; 4.3 linear feet) Series 2: Correspondence, 1931-1997 (Box 5-13; 9 linear feet) Series 3: Personal and Business Records, 1936-1997 (Box 14-17, 41, 46-49; 4.2 linear feet) Series 4: Exhibitions, 1930-1996 (Box 18-21, 42, OV 50; 3.3 linear feet) Series 5. Commissions, 1930-1992 (Box 21-22, OV 50-54 ; 2.0 linear feet) Series 6: Writings, circa 1929-1993 (Box 22-26, 42, 55; 4.6 linear feet) Series 7: Teaching Files, 1929-1995 (Box 26; .8 linear feet) Series 8: Photographs, circa 1917-1997 (Box 27-35, 43, 55-56; 9.5 linear feet) Series 9: Artwork, circa 1937-1995 (Box 36-37, 44, 57; 2.0 linear feet) Series 10: Printed Materials, circa 1914-1990 (Box 37-40, 45, 58; 3.9 linear feet)
Access Note / Rights:
Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Summary:
The papers of sculptor, painter, jewelry designer, and teacher Claire Falkenstein measure 42.8 linear feet and date from 1917 to her death in 1997. There is extensive correspondence with fellow artists, collectors, critics, friends, museums, and galleries. The collection also contains biographical materials, much of it collected and organized by Falkenstein, personal and business records, writings, diaries, exhibition files, commission files, teaching files, photographs, original artwork, scrapbooks, and printed materials. There is a short motion picture film of an interview with Falkenstein featuring the windows she designed for St. Basil's Church in Los Angeles.
Citation:
Claire Falkenstein papers, circa 1914-1997, bulk 1940-1990. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Funding:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Getty Foundation.
Use Note:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Related Materials:
The Archives of American Art also holds two oral history interviews with Claire Falkenstein. The interview on April 13, 1965 was conducted by Betty Hoag and the one on March 2 and 21, 1995 was conducted by Paul Karlstrom.
Biography Note:
Claire Falkenstein (1908-1997) spent the majority of her life working as an artist, sculptor, jewelry designer, teacher, and writer in California.
Claire Falkenstein was born in 1908 and grew up in Coos Bay, Oregon. In 1920, Falkenstein and her family moved to Berkeley, California, where she attended high school and then college at the University of California at Berkeley, studying philosophy, anthropology, and art. She graduated in 1930. Falkenstein had her first solo show at the East-West Gallery in San Francisco in 1930, the only member of her class to have an exhibition before graduation.
During the early 1930s, Falkenstein studied at Mills College with modernist sculptor Alexander Archipenko. There she also met Bauhaus artists Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes. Falkenstein married her high school sweetheart, Richard McCarthy in 1936.
In 1944, Falkenstein had her first New York exhibition at the Bonestall Gallery. At that time, Falkenstein's primary mediums were stone and wood. However, she became increasingly experimental with new materials that included sheet aluminum, Cor-Ten steel, glass, plastics, and welded wire rods while maintaining a connection to organic and natural forms. Her work in jewelry design was an outlet for exploring these new materials, forms, and techniques on a small scale. As her work grew physically larger, so did her recognition and it was her work in sculpture that won her a faculty appointment at the California School of Fine Arts from 1947-1949. It was here that she met Patricia and Clyfford Still, Hassel Smith, and Richard Diebenkorn.
In 1948, Falkenstein was invited to exhibit at the Salon des Realites Nouvelle in Paris, her first European show. She eventually moved to Europe in 1950 and had studios in Paris, Venice, and Rome. While in Europe, Falkenstein executed a number of large scale commissions, including the stair screen for Galerie Stadler (1955), grotto gates for Princess Pignatelli's villa in Rome (1957), and the bronze, steel, and the glass gate at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice (1961). While in Paris, she became acquainted with noted art critic Michel Tapie, with whom she maintained a life-long friendship.
During the 1940s and 1950s Falkenstein was a regular contributor to Arts and Architecture magazine, most often writing the "Art Comments from San Francisco" section. While in Paris, she also wrote a column on art news for the New York Herald Tribune .
Falkenstein returned to the United States in 1962, eventually renovating a studio space in Venice, California. It was here that she conceived her largest commissions. In 1965, Falkenstein received a commission from the California Savings and Loan to create a sculpture for a large fountain at the front of the bank in downtown Los Angeles. The copper tube fountain, entitled "Structure and Flow #2," was the first of many large scale public art commissions that Falkenstein completed during her years in California. Her most important commission in the United States, completed in 1969, was for the doors, rectory gates and grills and stained-glass windows for St. Basil's Church on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The eight doors and fifteen rectory screens, including 80 foot high windows in the nave, were an expansion of the "never ending screen" concept that Falkenstein executed with the Pignatelli commission in Rome. She continued to use this motif in her work throughout her career.
Claire Falkenstein worked as an arts instructor, visiting artist, and guest lecturer at many colleges, workshops, and schools in California. Her first position was at Mills College from 1946-1947. Shortly thereafter, she was appointed to the faculty at the California School of Fine Arts and later taught in the Extension Divisions of the University of California, Berkeley. She taught classes at California State Polytechnic University, California State University at Davis, and the Anna Head School. Falkenstein also taught art at the Pond Farm Workshops in California, and lectured at numerous colleges and museums. She served on many juried art shows in Southern California.
Falkenstein was acquainted with many artists, writers, instructors, collectors, gallery owners, and critics. Close friends included Esther and Bob Robles, Clyfford and Patricia Still, Michel Tapie, Allan Temko, Mark Tobey, Frans Wildenhain, and other notable figures in the art world.
Falkenstein continued to complete large scale private and public commissioned sculptures during the 1960s through the 1980s, including work for the University of Southern California, Hyland Biological Laboratory, California State University at Dominquez Hills and the California State Department of Motor Vehicles. Throughout her career, Falkenstein's work was featured in numerous exhibitions across the country. Her sculpture and other artwork can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Coos Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museum, University of Southern California Fisher Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Tate Gallery.
Falkenstein died in 1997 at the age of 89.
Language Note:
Some records are in French, Italian, and Spanish.
Provenance:
The Claire Falkenstein papers were donated in 1997 by Steffan Wacholtz and Nancy Kendall, trustees for the Claire Falkenstein Trust.
Location Note:
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 750 9th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001
Topic:
Art patronage  Search this
Artists' studios  Search this
Women artists  Search this
Women painters  Search this
Women designers  Search this
Women educators  Search this
Women authors  Search this
Theme:
Sketches & Sketchbooks  Search this
Women  Search this
Lives of artists  Search this
Record number:
(DSI-AAA_CollID)6135
(DSI-AAA_SIRISBib)216351
AAA_collcode_falkclai
Theme:
Sketches & Sketchbooks
Women
Lives of artists
Data Source:
Archives of American Art
EDAN-URL:
edanmdm:AAADCD_coll_216351