Christopher Wilmarth


Christopher Wilmarth was an American artist, known for producing sculptures using primarily glass and steel.

Early life

Christopher Wilmarth was born on June 11, 1943, in Sonoma, California. He was raised in Sonoma County and Palo Alto, California, before moving to New York City in the 1960s. He earned a B.F.A. from Cooper Union in 1966.

Career

Wilmarth was a professor of sculpture at Cooper Union and Columbia University.
Wilmarth arrived at glass as his preferred medium after moving to New York City, influenced by other minimalists, such as Donald Judd and Carl Andre, and the city scape. As a material, glass was capable of capturing, reflecting, and refracting light to illusory and emotional effect. His artistic practise was influenced by poetry and music, which can be seen through his choice of titles, as well as Romanticism and Modernists such as Henri Matisse and Constantin Brancusi.
In 1973, Wilmarth began a series of sculptures titled Nine Clearings for a Standing Man. Each work consisted of a sheet of subtly bent steel behind a sheet of etched glass.
In 1978, Wilmarth abandoned art dealer representation and established The Studio of the First Amendment, where he hosted his own exhibitions independently.

Death

On November 19, 1987, Wilmarth was found dead of an apparent suicide at his home in Red Hook, Brooklyn. He was 44.
In 2001, Wilmarth's wife, Susan Wilmarth-Rabineau, donated her late husband's archive of work to the Harvard Art Museums.

Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

Christopher Wilmarth: Matrix 29, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, 1977Christopher Wilmarth: Sculpture and Drawings, Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University, New York, NY, 1978Christopher Wilmarth, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, 1979Christopher Wilmarth: Breath, The Studio for the First Amendment, New York, NY, 1982Christopher Wilmarth: Layers, Works from 1961-1984, Hirshl & Adler Modern, New York, NY, 1984Christopher Wilmarth/Days on Blue 1977, Neuberger Museum,Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY, 1989Christopher Wilmarth, Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY, 1989Christopher Wilmarth, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 1989Christopher Wilmarth, DIA Center for the Arts, Bridgehampton, NY, 1994Christopher Wilmarth: Sculpture and Painting from the 1960s and 1980s, Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, NY, 1997Christopher Wilmarth, Arts of Club of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2001Christopher Wilmarth: Living Inside, University Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Amherst, MA, 2001Christopher Wilmarth: Drawing into Sculpture, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2003Reverie: Christopher Wilmarth, Before and After Mallarmé, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, May 20–August 13, 2017Christopher Wilmarth, Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, NY, September 6-October 29, 2017

Group Exhibitions

Cool Art - 1967, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, 1968Three Sculptors: Chris Wilmarth, John duff, Peter Charles, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1987Sculpture Since the Sixties, Whitney Museum of American Art at Equitable Center, New York, NY, 1998The Transparent Thread: Asian Philosophy in Recent American Art, Hofstra Museum, Hofstra University, Hampstead, NY, 1990Contemporary Drawing: Existence, Passage and the Dream, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 1991In a Classical Vein: Work from the Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 1994Matrix is 20!, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, 1995Minimalism: Its Aftermath and Affinities, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, 1996A Decade of Collecting: Selected Recent Acquisitions in Modern Drawing, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 1997Recent Glass Sculpture: A Union of Ideas, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, MI, 1997Drawing Is Another Kind of Language: Recent American Drawings from a New York Private Collection, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, MA, 1997–1998DeNaturalized, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, 1998Edward R. Broida Collection: A Selection of Works Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL, 1998Carved, Modeled, Assembled, Welded, Drawn: Sculptors’ Works in the Collection of the Albright-Knox, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 1999Surroundings; Responses to the American Landscape, Selections from The Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA, 2000Material Language: Small-Scale Sculpture after 1950, The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 2000Tina Turner, Christopher Wilmarth; In the Blue Blackness of My Sleep, Leonid Lerman, Rhapsody, Jennifer Bartlett from the Edward R. Broida Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, 2000Minding Glass, Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA, 2000A Decade of Collecting: Recent Acquisitions of Prints and Drawings from 1940 to 2000, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, 2000Clement Greenberg: A Critic’s Collection, Portland Art Museum, OR, 2001About Objects, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, 2001Against The Grain, Contemporary Art from the Edward R. Broida Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 2006Not New Work: Vincent Fecteau Selects from the Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, 20091969, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, 2009–2010Drawn/Taped/Burned: Abstraction on Paper, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY, 2011

Public Collections

Wilmarth’s sculptures and works on paper are held in a number of significant public collections and have been the subject of museum projects and scholarly catalogues. The Harvard Art Museums, among other institutions, hold materials from his archive; museum catalogues and the record of gallery exhibitions offer the principal routes for research. For primary-source study, researchers should consult the holdings and catalogues published by major institutions that have mounted his work.