Remembering Joel Shapiro
Paula Cooper Gallery is deeply saddened by the loss of Joel Shapiro (1941-2025), a colleague and dear friend of many years, who died on June 14th in Manhattan, New York.
Joel Shapiro, untitled, 2021, wood and casein, 47 7/8 x 48 1/2 x 32 3/4 in. Photo: Steven Probert.
Joel Shapiro, 20 Elements, 2004-05. Wood and casein, 122 x 132 x 85 in. Photo by Kevin Todora, courtesy of the Nasher Sculpture Center.
Joel Shapiro, untitled, 2021, wood and casein, overall: 55 1/4 x 30 1/4 x 22 in. (140.3 x 76.8 x 55.9 cm). Photo: Steven Probert.
“When sculpture was going big and Minimal, Joel Shapiro went small and figurative, commanding space with the most limited of means and proving that geometry could carry human (often existential) meaning. He started out in the vicinity of Process Art, using terracotta and porcelain to record the simplest of forming methods. And he expanded from there with diminutive houses, horses and his nervy chair, eventually adding scale and color, revisiting history (especially Constructivism) and always implying the precarious balance of life. His output has greater range and variety and weird one-offs—the central image below—than has yet been made known. He was a wonderful artist.”
—Roberta Smith
Joel Shapiro, Two Hands Forming, 1971, fired clay, 93 units, approximately 3 inches diameter, each.
Joel Shapiro, untitled, 1974, cast bronze, 13 x 27 ¾ x 2 in.
Joel Shapiro, untitled, 1974, cast iron, 3 x 1 ¼ x 1 ¼ in.
Shapiro’s sculpture and drawing have been the focus of twenty-one one-person exhibitions at Paula Cooper Gallery, and many group shows. Since his earliest shows, Shapiro has created work that activates and reconfigures space using subtle manipulations of scale.
Joel Shapiro, Untitled, 1969, ink on paper, 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 in. (8.3 x 8.3 cm)
Shapiro first showed at Paula Cooper Gallery in a group exhibition in 1969. The work was a delicate ink drawing made by repeatedly marking the paper with fingerprints, exploring time and accumulation.
Installation view, Joel Shapiro, Paula Cooper Gallery, 96-100 Prince Street, New York, March 8 - April 1 1970. Photo: Geoffrey Clements
Shapiro’s first one-person exhibition took place at Paula Cooper Gallery on Prince Street in SoHo in 1970. A series of shelves installed above eye level held materials for making sculpture: steel, aluminum, marble, oak. “It was good work. It was about material and finding a structure that can contain the work,” Shapiro reflected in 2009.
Installation view, Joel Shapiro: New Sculpture, Paula Cooper Gallery, November 1 – 29, 1984, New York.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s Shapiro’s sculpture gradually increased in scale. His condensed, diminutive steel boxes and houses expanded their limbs to become large-scale figures extending into space.
Installation view, Joel Shapiro, Paula Cooper Gallery, 534 West 21st Street, New York, January 25 – February 22, 2014. Photo: Steven Probert.
A monumental sculpture of ten brightly hued wooden beams suspended in mid-air was installed at 534 West 21st Street in 2014. Generating a sense of exploding and cascading planes in riotous color, the work combines Shapiro’s iconic vocabulary of simple rectilinear shapes and subtle shifts of scale to activate and reconfigure space.
Joel Shapiro, Chasm, 1976 – 1977, cast iron, 12 x 12 x 6.25 in. Photo: Eeva Inkeri
Upcoming Exhibition
In September 2025 we will open an exhibition of Shapiro’s early work. This presentation of intimate, evocative sculpture and drawing from the 1970s will be a tribute to the life and work of an endlessly engaging and dynamic artist.
Born in 1941 in New York City, Joel Shapiro has executed more than 30 publicly-sited sculptures across Asia, Europe, and North America, and has been the subject of numerous one-person and retrospective exhibitions, including at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (1980); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1982); the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1985); the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1995-6); the Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2011); the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2016); the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2017) and the Yale University Art Gallery (2018). Shapiro’s work can be found in international public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Tate Gallery, London; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
All artwork: © 2025 Joel Shapiro / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.