Mark di Suvero

(American, born 1933)

Mark di Suvero is an American artist who welds scrap metal into monumental outdoor sculpture. His works are built using materials salvaged from demolished buildings, and are directly influenced by the movement and freedom he saw in Abstract Expressionist painters like Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock. No matter how large or heavy his sculptures may be, Di Suvero often allows a certain degree of motion to be possible within the finished works. Born Marco Polo di Suvero on September 18, 1933 in Shanghai, China to Italian parents, where his father was a naval expert stationed in China by the Italian government. Di Suvero’s family immigrated to San Francisco after the onset of World War II, and he went on to attend the San Francisco City College and the University of California Berkeley. Moving to New York in 1957, during his early years as an artist he worked in construction, something which nearly cost him his life in 1960, when he was involved in elevator accident. After recovering from the injury, Di Suvero focused his energy into sculpture. Today, his works are installed in public locations around the world, and are featured in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others. The artist continues to live and work in Queens, NY.