“Space has been the most important element in sculpture for me. We see space stereoscopically (with two eyes) yet almost all photographs see monocularly (with one eye). To replace this lost dimension, I have thought to add poems I love and that have changed my life, so that the bridge between the poem and the photo-image becomes the true reality, a voyage to the imagination in your mind’s eye.” - Mark di Suvero

Born to Italian Diplomats in Shanghai, China, September 18, 1933, di Suvero and his family immigrated to San Francisco in 1941. He dropped out of high school to travel, and eventually apprenticed as a ship builder and house painter. From 1953 to 1956 he jumped from school to school, studying sculpture and philosophy at San Francisco City College, the University of California Santa Barbara and University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy. In 1957 he moved to New York where he began sculpting with scrap material. In 1960 di Suvero was paralyzed by a fall down an elevator shaft. He built the “Tower of Peace” in 1966 as a protest against the Vietnam War in Los Angeles, California and established the Socrates Sculpture Park, an outdoor museum and artist residency program in Long Island, NY, 1986. Di Suvero’s work is a fusion between 1950’s Abstract Expressionism painting and 1960’s constructivist sculpture; his work maintains the fluidity of the first and the assemblage of the latter.