Wright Auction

Christopher Wilmarth was an American artist celebrated for his groundbreaking contributions to the realm of contemporary sculpture. Born in Sonoma, California, Wilmarth's artistic journey began with his studies at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Later, he pursued his education at The Cooper Union in New York, where he honed his craft before going on work in Tony Smith's studio for a few years. Wilmarth returned to Cooper Union in 1969 as a Professor of Sculpture and Drawing, a position he retained until 1980.

Wilmarth's style was characterized by a profound sensitivity to material and space. He primarily worked with glass, steel, and light, creating sculptures that exuded a sense of ethereal beauty and poetic resonance. His pieces often explored themes of transparency, weightlessness, and the elusive nature of perception, inviting viewers to engage with their surroundings in new and profound ways.

Throughout his career, Wilmarth drew inspiration from a diverse array of sources, including the minimalist aesthetics of artists like Donald Judd and Carl Andre, the reductive forms of Constantin Brancusi, and the lines and shading employed by Henri Matisse. In particular, the existential musings of writer Stephen Mallarmé's poetry exerted a profound influence on Wilmarth's artistic vision, shaping his understanding of the relationship between language, space, and visual expression.

Mallarmé's enigmatic writings, with their emphasis on symbolism and the suggestive power of language, resonated deeply with Wilmarth's exploration of abstraction and metaphor in sculpture. The French poet's ideas about the essential elusiveness of meaning and the transformative potential of art infused Wilmarth's work with a sense of mystery and depth, inviting viewers to contemplate the mysteries of existence and the fleeting nature of human experience. Wilmarth remarked of his sculptures: “[they] are places to generate [my experience] compressed into light and shadow and return them to the world as a physical poem.” He felt that glass was the best medium for capturing the effects of light, and began employing it in his sculptures from 1967 onward.

Though Wilmarth's oeuvre is not expansive in quantity—owing, in large part, to the brevity of the artist's life—it encompasses a wide range of works, from large-scale installations to intimate, delicately wrought pieces as well as etchings, paintings, and drawings. His sculptures can be found in prominent public collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. Despite his untimely death by suicide at age 44, Wilmarth's legacy endures as a testament to the enduring power of art to inspire, provoke, and illuminate the human spirit.