Robert Engman

Robert Engman (1927-2018) was one of the most inventive American sculptors of the postwar era, whose mathematically rigorous geometric abstractions have become distinguished public landmarks across the United States. Born in Belmont, Massachusetts, he pursued his artistic training at the Rhode Island School of Design before continuing his graduate studies at Yale University under Josef Albers, whose disciplined engagement with color, form, and structure profoundly influenced Engman's development.

Engman joined the Yale faculty from 1955 to 1963 and then moved to the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught for many decades and served as chairman of the Department of Fine Arts. His long teaching career placed him at the heart of American sculptural education during a period of rapid transformation, and his influence extended through generations of students who continued to shape American sculpture throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

Engman's mature sculpture is characterized by its rigorous mathematical foundations, its interest in continuous surfaces, and its exploration of the tensile and topological possibilities of geometric form. Working primarily in bronze, aluminum, and stainless steel, he produced sculptures whose intricate curvatures and complex spatial relationships often derive from mathematical equations, giving each piece an underlying logic that becomes visible only through careful looking. His major public commissions include Triune in Philadelphia and After the Rain in the same city, both installed as significant contributions to the urban landscape.

Engman received numerous awards and honors throughout his career and was elected to the National Academy of Design. His sculptures are held in significant public and private collections across the United States, and his work continues to be appreciated for its exceptional structural intelligence, its meditative geometric beauty, and its sustained investigation of the possibilities of continuous form.

The following is excerpted from Theme and Variations: Robert Engman Sculpture by Robert Engman, Nancy Porter and Anders Engman (Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2016):

My involvement with sculpture began in 1954 at Yale University. Josef Albers ran the Graduate School of Art and Jose de Rivera was the major force in the study of sculpture at the school. Jose was widely admired for his elegant work and was an important factor in my discovering the path I have taken in sculpture in the years since. De Rivera said that the creative act could only be achieved by the individual without the clear inspiration of his teachers. He said that when this happened, when the source of the design came solely from the artist, then the result would be a work of art that had never existed before.

I worked hard to find my own path in sculpture in the early years, but found myself making work that was reminiscent of others, specifically de Rivera and the German sculptor Max Bill. Albers would look at my work and remind me that I was “following” and not “finding,” that if I continued on this path, my work would be thought of as derivative of others. During the summer of 1955 Albers had left for Germany and I was desperate, working alone at Yale in the basement of Street Hall. I tried to simplify my approach and thought, what would happen if I simply bent this thing, and if I bent it, what would happen if I bent another one just like it and stuck them together? It wasn’t a question of thinking of forms as much as it was the consequence of the process. I took a sheet of brass that was ¼” thick and about a foot square. I started to hammer the edges with a cross-peened hammer, which spread the metal as it struck it. I continued hammering about ¼” each row all the way around, which warped the sheet because the hammering had increased the surface area along the edge. Gradually the two opposing corners of the sheet came up and touched, and a new form was created.

When Albers returned from Germany at the end of the summer, he asked me if I had done any work and I showed the piece. He seemed very pleased at what he saw and said, “Now you are on your way.”

Everything that takes place happens in a sequence. We age in time. Plants grow in time. They become bigger and mature in time. After I made the first form, I probably produced a dozen or so related forms. Then I started to realize what was happening. Each of these was a growth experience in my mind. I was starting to accumulate a notion of sequence in these shapes. They were evolving.

As I made something, it did two things: it answered the question of why it occurred in the first place, but it also asked the question, “What’s next?” A lot of times, it was more than one thing offering several possibilities. It becomes a circle this way and a circle this way, with two holes that are this way in the center. I thought to myself, That’s amazing! I didn’t add anything. I didn’t take anything away. It was absorbed, controlled action.

For the past ten years I have been working on a series of small pieces, working in a scale that is reduced in size from earlier pieces allows me to experience more of the formal relationships than before. By reducing the physical size of the pieces, it has allowed for a quicker development of certain principles that each piece represents. The future presents the opportunity for many more variations.

—Robert Engman