Clement Meadmore (February 9, 1929 - April 19, 2005) was born in

Melbourne, Australia. As a boy, Meadmore was strongly impressed by

his mother's interest in the work of an uncle, Jesse Jewhurst Hilder

(1881-1916), an Australian watercolorist in the style of Corot. She also

instilled an interest in ballet and, first among artists, Edgar Degas.

Meadmore originally studied aeronautical engineering at the Royal

Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. After graduating in

1949, he designed furniture until 1953 when his first sculpture of

welded steel was offered for sale. In 1953 he traveled to England,

France and Germany, then in 1959 visited Japan.

While a young artist, his work was highly regarded and he was awarded

a number of exhibitions, including several one-person shows in

Melbourne and Sydney, where he lived since 1960. Meadmore moved to

New York in 1963 at the age of 34 and later became a United States

citizen. With the exception of a year spent in Australia, as photo editor

for Vogue magazine, Meadmore lived and worked in New York.

Meadmore once said, "I am interested in geometry as a grammar which,

if understood, can be used with great flexibility and expressiveness."

But Meadmore went farther. His starting point was geometry, a

language or "grammar" that is both rigorously structured and conceptual

in nature - a construct of the mind - and therefore intangible. He

evolved a method that transformed geometry into something pliant and

plastic. In his hands geometry acquired an expressive suppleness and

materiality more typical of such conventional and palpable media as

wood and clay. To borrow his own phrase, Meadmore in his work

"transcended geometry," thus placing the stamp of his individual vision

on one of the primary modes of twentieth century art.

Meadmore was one of the first sculptors to work with COR-TEN steel,

which became his preferred medium. He admired the natural, rusted

patina of this steel which, in this case, gives the impression of an

industrial beam, no longer of any use and left to rot on a vacant block.

In the studio of his apartment, he built small maquettes which were no

more than 30 cm long. If he saw that the maquettes had potential to be

translated on a monumental scale, he would have the works

manufactured as large sculptures by a local fabrication plant. His

powerful but spare works were often fabricated at Lippincott, Inc., in

Connecticut, a plant that was specially developed to strictly produce

works of art.

--From the artist's website, meadmore.com