Page 58 - Studio International - July 1966

A group of sculptors

U.S. West Coast commentary by Anita Ventura
The latest work of the sculptor Tio Giambruni, shown end in constructed pieces of smaller pipe and rounds,
recently at San Francisco's BERKELEY GALLERY, is enor- with the serpentine form becoming a rather creepy
mous in scale, and shares with much new sculpture a pedestal. In Day people the circle is moved laterally as well
suitability for architectural installation, suggesting at the as being tunnelled, and flat circles or bloopy incomplete
same time the possibility of a new mode for architecture ones are given off from the three piled-up cylinders set in
itself. rectangles that compose the piece. The material is cast
These sculptures came as a surprise after Giambruni's aluminium or bronze, and the quality fine, as is usual
abstract-expressionism. His work had been chiefly with Giambruni, who operates his own foundry at the
gestural, with a balance that indicated a centre of University of California at Davis. While the work aims at
gravity (in both senses) no matter to what extremes the and achieves a power overshadowing the pleasurable
folded and draped sheets of metal might be flung from niceties of patina and surface that have been a hallmark
the core. But several years ago Giambruni started work- of his work since he first exhibited in 1951, they still
ing in both bas-relief and in small cast pieces with circles incorporate details that speak of 'high' craft. But because
and squares, embellishing these with the folds and drapes of the scale and the rough, somewhat mechanical forms
customary in his earlier, freer forms. Now, it seems, he in works like Tibaldo it is a little like finding a blade of
has decided to concentrate wholly upon these forms, to grass growing up between city paving-stones. In Day
tunnel the circle, pile up the square, and make a sculp- people, however, the rainbow-high polish of the alu-
ture that cannot properly be called 'open' (although the minium supports and the contrast of the finishes on the
Tio Giambruni circles come through to the light), and is more correctly various parts do not seem anomalous, perhaps because
Left
Tibaldo 1966 described as monolithic, even though interrupted by the attached and partial circles are idiosyncratic and
Cast aluminium and bronze `openness'. His Down Jim Hill's main line of 1966 is a humanize the mechanical quality, making a soft, beauti-
Length 20 ft Height 12 ft serpentine tunnel, 14 feet long, made of individual ful touch appropriate.
sections of what looks like construction pipe (the forms
Right
Day people 1966 are, in fact, cast from moulds he makes himself). Set near Earlier in the season the sculptor William King showed
Cast aluminium this humped caterpillar—but not touching it—is a cylinder at the same gallery. A New Yorker, King has been
built of the same rounds. Tibaldo and Bum Bum you've visiting instructor in sculpture at the University of
Berkeley Gallery, San
Francisco been here too long use the same constructive elements, but California under a programme to encourage New York