PETER FORAKIS

Peter Forakis (1927-2009)Peter Forakis, considered one of the forerunners of the 1960's avant-garde movement that used geometric concepts in the visual arts died on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 2009 of complications from pneumonia in a Petaluma, California hospital. He was 82.Forakis was born in Hanna, Wyoming in 1927. The son of a Greek immigrant, he grew up on the Wyoming prairie until the age of 10 when his family moved to Oakland, California. Eventually they settled in Modesto, California. At a young age he joined the Merchant Marines (1945-50). After serving in the U.S. Army in Korea and Japan (1950-53), he earned his B.F.A. degree from the San Francisco Art Institute (now the California School of Fine Arts) in 1957. He collaborated with other beat era artists to establish the Six Gallery and Dilexi Gallery, both important precursors to the Bay Area Beat and Funk movements. Among his cohorts were Mark di Suvero, Leo Valledor, Joan Brown as well as others.In 1958 Forakis moved to New York City. It was during this time in New York in the late 1950s-1960s that Forakis emerged as a prominent member of the art world, and, along with artists Mark di Suvero, Ed Ruda, Dean Fleming, Robert Grosvenor, Anthony Magar, Tamara Melcher, Forrest "Frosty" Myers, David Novros and Leo Valledor, he founded the Park Place Gallery (1963-67), a unique artists' co-op space. Park Place became the prototype for experimental art spaces of the 1970's. Forakis was a ceaseless experimenter and was conducting his own research during the Park Place Gallery time period. Although he began as a painter, his paintings became sculpture. His work quickly evolved in a 3-dimensional direction, with a seminal series of "3D paintings" (1959-62) consisting of brightly painted abstract constructions made from mostly found timber which literally "came off the wall." Sadly, few of these works remain.Forakis became fascinated by geometry and his focus became sculptural. San Francisco Chronicle Art Critic Kenneth Baker credits Forakis as the "originator of geometry-based sculpture from the 60s". In an article by Joanne Dickson titled "Profile: Peter Forakis" in the Winter 1981 edition of Ocular Magazine Forakis said, "Geometry...is a natural law that exists not only in my thinking and my blood, bones, and marrow, but in the universe and all its matter." Forakis embarked on his lifelong exploration of the cube and hypercube along with Four-Dimensional theories. Since the late 1950's Peter Forakis has been a prolific producer of sculpture based on geometric shapes such as cubes, spheres, octahedrons and rhomboids. Some of his best knows pieces include Daedules & Icarus (1963), Magic Box (1966) and Hyper Cube,1967 (Walker Art Center). In 1967 Forakis received his first monumental scale commission. Atlanta Gateway, one of the largest existing works of modern sculpture anywhere measuring 100 feet by 200 feet by 100 feet of tubular steel spans a major traffic artery in Atlanta Georgia's Southwest Industrial Park. By the early 1970s Forakis had begun experimenting with his "slots" technique, one of his signature achievements notable both as a unique language of examining geometry and for fabricating large scale works in steel without welding. Cutting slots into steel and sliding sheets together allowed large sculptures to be assembled using only gravity and the weight of the material. Archimedes Cube, (series, beginning in 1968) a signature piece for Forakis, has no welds, only slots. Of his monumental slotted sculptures are Sokar: the Egyptian Key (1974), and Jack London (1982) owned by the Oakland Museum and located in the Oakland Estuary, Oakland, California.Other large sculptures include Tower of Lakota, 1965 Williams College, Massachusetts; Tower of Cheyenne, 1970 at the University of Houston, Texas; Three Graces, 1985 Walnut Creek, California; Big Joe, 1987 Healdsburg, California; Red Quake, 1988, Santa Rosa, California; and his most recent installation Dubull Eagull, 1989 Petaluma, California.His works are in such collections as, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Oakland Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN and in numerous private collections.Forakis' exhibition career spans 55 years and he counted as his colleagues such other notable as Mark di Suvero, Charles Ginnever, Manual Neri, Deborah Remmington, Robert Motherwell, Robert Indiana, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning. While living in New York he painted Marcel Duchamp's apartment and often saw Andy Warhol about town. Significant exhibitions to name only a few include Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum New York, 1966; Sculpture of the 60's, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Sculpture Yesterday/Today, Sculpture Now, inc., New York 1977; Prospect Mountain Sculpture Show, Lake George, NY 1979; and Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX 2008.Forakis held teaching positions at the Brooklyn Museum Art School (1961-65), Carnegie Technical School of Architecture and Art (1965), Pennsylvania State University (1966), Cooper Union Art School (1967),Windham College in Vermont (1968-77), Schools of Visual Arts, New York City (1978), University of California at Berkeley (1979), and the University of Kentucky (1980-82). In the early 1980s an NEA grant allowed Forakis to travel to Europe for six months where he studied classical sculpture and architecture. He returned to California in 1983 living in Sonoma County and eventually the town of Petaluma where he remained till his death. In his later years, although he struggled with health issues, he continued to work daily on his art and marveled at each new discovery he made.Peter Forakis is survived daughter Christina Forakis of Sacramento, California; daughter Gia Forakis, the New York theater director; and son Jozeph Forakis, the industrial designer who lives in Milan, Italy. His family released the following statement: "We are deeply saddened by the passing of our dad, but comforted knowing his legacy will remain in our hearts and in the steel he loved. For all those who knew him Peter Forakis was a larger than life figure and a continuous fountain of energy and inspiration."He is represented by Togonon Gallery, San Francisco, California. Services December 4 2009 1:00PM