Back to Joseph Cornell Artworks For Sale American artist and sculptor, Joseph Cornell (1903 - 1972), most known for his highly distinctive 'boxes' and collages created from found objects, is one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. With no formal training in the arts, Joseph Cornell was influenced by the Surrealists and although he remained out of the spotlight, was claimed as a herald of pop art and installation art.

Biography Joseph Cornell (1903 – 1972) Joseph Cornell was born December 24, 1903, in Nyack, New York. From 1917 to 1921, he attended Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. He was an avid collector of memorabilia and, while working as a woolen-goods salesman in New York until 1931, developed his interests in ballet, literature, and opera. He lived with his mother and brother, Robert, at their home in the Flushing section of Queens. In the early 1930s, Cornell met Surrealist writers and artists at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York, and saw Max Ernst’s collage-novel La Femme 100 têtes. Cornell’s early constructions of found objects were first shown in the group exhibition Surréalisme at Levy’s gallery in 1932. From 1934 to 1940, Cornell supported himself by working as a textile designer at the Traphagen studio in New York. During these years, he became familiar with Marcel Duchamp’s readymades and Kurt Schwitters’s box constructions. Cornell was included in the 1936 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada [more], Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Always interested in film and cinematic techniques, he made a number of movies, including the collage film Rose Hobart (ca. 1936) and wrote two film scenarios. One of these, Monsieur Phot (1933), was published in 1936 in Levy’s book Surrealism. Cornell’s first two solo exhibitions took place at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932 and 1939, and they included an array of objects, a number of them in shadow boxes. During the 1940s and 1950s, he made Aviary, Hotel, Observatory, and Medici boxes, among other series, as well as boxes devoted to stage and screen personalities. In the early 1960s, Cornell stopped making new boxes and began to reconstruct old ones and to work intensively in collage. Cornell retrospectives were held in 1967 at the Pasadena Art Museum and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In 1970, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York mounted an exhibition of his collages. Joseph Cornell died December 29, 1972, at his home in Flushing. Curriculum Vitae Joseph Cornell 1903 Born, Nyack, NY 1917-21 Studied at Phillips Academy Andover, MA 1972 Died, Flushing, NY Selected Exhibitions 1970 New York Painting and Sculpture 1940-1970, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY 1967 Dada, Surrealism, and their Heritage, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1966 An Exhibition of Works by Joseph Cornell, Pasadena Museum of Art, Pasadena, CA 1966 Retrospective, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY 1962 Retrospective, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 1961 The Art of Assemblage, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1953 Annual Survey Exhibition of American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 1952 Fifteen Americans, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1949 Work inspired by the ballet, La Lanterne Magique du Ballet Romantique, Hugo Gallery, New York, NY 1939 Julien Levy Gallery, New York, NY 1936 Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, Museum of Modern Art New York, NY 1936 Screening of his first film, Rose Hobart Julein Levy Gallery, New York, NY 1935 American Painting and Sculpture of the 18th, 19th, & 20th Centuries, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT 1932 Surrealisme, Julien Levy Gallery, New York, NY Statement “Shadow boxes become poetic theaters or settings wherein are metamorphosed the element of a childhood pastime.” - Joseph Cornell Press Release Artists who work with found materials are frequently described as making something out of nothing. This characterization is based on the estimation that the salvaged materials are ordinary, their value transitory or forgotten, and their existance ephemeral until the artist has intervened and provided them with a new reality or reason for being. Cornell's interest in the ordinary and fleeting was so elevated that he named it the "métaphysique d'éphemera," suggesting that literal things can create an elaborate and subtle form of magic. Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Joseph Cornell: Shadowplay... Eterniday, p. 23 Links Joseph Cornel ~ Navigating the Imagination Joseph Cornell Study Center of the Ontological Museum Joseph Cornell Box