Claire Falkenstein is best known as a sculptor, but she was also a painter, printmaker, and jewelry designer. She studied and taught in the Bay Area in the 1930s, during which time she met European émigré artists Alexander Archipenko and László Moholy-Nagy. Painted in 1942, the year a major steel mill opened in California to satisfy wartime needs, Tapping Out Steel depicts two workers with oversized hands. Combining aspects of Cubism and Surrealism, the flat figural shapes are integrated into their architectural surroundings, while the angle of their pole and their bent arms and feet reinforce a sense of spatial depth.
Falkenstein’s best known projects include the 1962 bronze, steel, and glass entrance gates to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy, and the 1969 stained glass windows for St. Basil’s Church on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Wall label, 2021.
