Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA)

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Ibram Lassaw (1913-2003) moved to America in 1921. Influenced by Alexander Calder, Lassaw began to create sculpture in the 1930s. His work is most noted for open-space constructions achieved through welding. His first open-work sculptures were influenced by the styles of Mondrian and Miro, in which he struggles with representing the free and controlled. As his work developed, Lassaw became one of the first American sculptors to abandon conventional techniques and embraced an abstract style that employed space as a dominant structural role. Lassaw produced sculptures that allowed the eye to ‘enter into’ the spatial area without having to walk around it, as in older styles. His vision belongs to the New York abstract expressionist style, in which he participates in immediate inspiration and apparent accident, in which he used to focus on the concept of structure isolated in infinite space.