Sculptor of Wit 

The drawings, collages, and metal sculptures of Michael Malpass in some ways embody a shift in 1970s America. From his black-smithed abstract figures, we see him pivot from a formalist aesthetic championed by his first gallerist, Betty Parsons, to a frontier of creativity that celebrates the found object. Meticulously, Malpass welded and fused together the industrial overstock of the collapsed manufacturing base in metro NYC. He sourced machined parts by the barrel lot from disused factories and warehouses in the outer boroughs, fashioning them into highly-polished spheres. In his sketchbooks, he drew directly on tourist maps and other printed matter, and then glued on torn currency, postage stamps, and beer bottle labels to create autobiographical tableaux. With torch and saw, he fashioned scrap into whimsical figures he called “chicken man” compositions. Throughout his work, humor radiates, sometimes as a counterbalance to the violent and brutal methods of shaping metal, other times as a tonic to his own melancholy.

Artwork Caption: Michael Malpass, c. 1978–1980. Pratt Institute Division of External Affairs photographer. Photo credit: Courtesy of the Pratt Institute Archives, Brooklyn, NY.