Pedro Friedeberg
BANCA ZIGURATICA NINIVESCA DE 3 PLAZAS (SCULPTURE)
2018

Name: BANCA ZIGURATICA NINIVESCA DE 3 PLAZAS (SCULPTURE)
Brand: Pedro Friedeberg
Price: 2450 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Wood sculpture with gold color trim. Hand signed and numbered on the underside by the artist. From the edition of 4. Certificate of Authenticity is included. Artwork is in excellent condition. All reasonable offers will be considered. About the Artist: Pedro Friedeberg is a contemporary Mexican artist best known for his Surrealist sculptures and prints. His eclectic body of work bridges architectural imagery and psychedelic patterns with occult iconography. In one of his most famous works, Hand Chair (1961), the artist melds practical furniture design into the shape of a giant hand. Born Pietro Enrico Hoffman Landsberg on January 11, 1936 in Florence, Italy to German-Jewish immigrants escaping the Holocaust, he and his family moved to Mexico when Friedeberg was 3 years old. Influenced by the books of Renaissance and Gothic architecture he saw as a child, Friedeberg studied to become an architect at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. In 1960, he dropped out of architecture school and turned his focus to painting and designing. It was around this time that he fell into the artistic circles of Surrealists and Neo-Dadaists, including Remedios Varo, Mathias Goeritz, and Leonora Carrington. Friedeberg's strange compositions and eccentric attitude has earned him international recognition. Today, the artist’s works are held among the collections of the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Friedeberg currently lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico.

Creator:

Pedro Friedeberg (1936, Mexican)

Creation Year:

2018

Dimensions:

Height: 5.75 in (14.61 cm)Width: 10 in (25.4 cm)Depth: 5.75 in (14.61 cm)

Medium:

Wood

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

21st Century

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Aventura, FL

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU72538578082

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Shop All Pedro Friedeberg

Pedro Friedeberg

The sculptor and painter Pedro Friedeberg works in a richly detailed, Surrealist and eccentric artistic style that blends influences from neoclassical art, M.C. Escher and native Mesoamerican symbolism. He is best known for his Hand chair — a functional sculpture that is an icon of design-as-art.

Friedeberg was born in Florence to German parents and moved with his mother to Mexico at the outset of World War II. As a university student in Mexico City in the 1950s, he initially studied architecture, but his designs for fantastical buildings ran afoul of his rationalist, Bauhaus-oriented teachers.

By chance, Friedeberg’s drawings came to the attention of Mathias Goeritz, the German-born Dadaist painter and sculptor. He encouraged Friedeberg and made him a protégé. Friedeberg credits his mentor for instilling in him a fanatical attention to detail in his work. Friedeberg produced his first Hand chair in 1961, and has since created numerous iterations. He has also made several variants using other human limbs in different functional forms such as tables and clocks.

While Friedeberg’s sculptures have a gentle character that is sometimes described as spiritual, his paintings and prints are something entirely different. He employs deep perspective to create hypnotic, painstakingly rendered canvases that suggest rooms and cityscapes.

Whatever the medium, Friedeberg’s work is arresting and instantly recognizable. The Hand chair, though familiar, remains a captivating piece — both furniture and artwork — that stands apart in any interior. Examples are often priced between $20,000 and $30,000, depending on formal variations (such as a foot-shaped pedestal), material and condition. Smaller functional items such as tabletop clocks bring about $9,000. His paintings and drawings require space; they are meant to be contemplated. Prices on original examples start at about $30,000; prints generally sell in the region of $900.

As you will see on 1stDibs, the art and design of Pedro Friedeberg is singular and memorable.