$30,000

American
circa 1959

Sculptural maquette of vacuum- molded styrene, painted steel rods and metal created in 1959 by Austrian/American sculptor and designer Erwin Hauer (1926-1917). Hauer’s light-filtering, modular Continua screens are three-dimensional, space-filling sculptures that are conceptually similar to innovative architecture and engineering (works by Antoni Gaudi, Felix Candela, and Frei Otto) as well as advanced mathematical concepts (triply periodic infinite surfaces without self-intersections). They were deployed as brise-soleil and dividers in projects in the day by modernist architects such as Gordon Bunschaft, Victor Bisharat, Florence Knoll, Welton Becket (for the Coca-Cola Pavilion at the 1964-65 World’s Fair) and Edward Durell Stone, and have been revived in the past two decades. They can be seen in recent projects by Polshek and Partners, Gensler, Foster + Partners, and Roman & Williams. Design 7, however, was never put into production as a module or screen, and so the this artistic experiment exists tangibly today in only one or two original hand-built studies. It is illustrated in a 2004 monograph on Hauer published by Princeton Architectural Press, and in a 2017 autobiographical book by Hauer. The present example was included in a solo exhibition about Hauer at Yale University, where he studied and taught, in 2019, and can be seen in photographs of the exhibit. Provenance: Acquired directly from Hauer by one of his Yale students in the mid-1960’s. Ref: Continua: Screens and Walls (Princeton Architectural Press, 2004); Still Facing Infinity: Sculpture by Erwin Hauer (Images Publishing, 2017); and Still Facing Infinity: The Tectonic Sculptures of Erwin Hauer at the Yale Museum, 2019. Period Hauer sculptural maquettes or studies are exceedingly rare in the market, as almost all of this work remains with the Hauer estate.

Condition
Wear, oxidation, and loss of paint to metal elements; wear, cracking, and a one-inch round dent (top, middle) to the styrene. All consistent with aging to an inherently fragile object.

Measurements (including wood base)
Height 42 in.
Width/length 32 in.
Depth 7.5 in.

Specifications
Number of items: 1
Materials/techniques: hand-built of vacuum-molded styrene, painted steel rods/piano wire, and painted metal with a wooden base.