Memphis 'Cappello' Library by Susana Solano - 1989

Metal shelving piece, by artist Susana Solano, Meta Memphis, Italy, 1989. This was a limited edition of 25 pieces for Memphis Milano. The book case shelving is adjustable in height. Feels like a Japanese inspired pentagon group piece.
Guggenheim:
Susana Solano was born in Barcelona in 1946 and studied at the city's Real acadèmia Catalana de bellas artes de San Jorge (now the Reial acadèmia Catalana de belles arts de Sant Jordi). As a child she was exposed to the beauty of her country through frequent visits to a family estate "El Palau" in Falset, as well as Sant Gregori, Valldoreix, and the Mediterranean Coast—all locations that profoundly influenced her relationship to space and materials and their use in her sculpture, drawing, and photography. She belongs to a generation of Spanish sculptors working in the country's ironwork tradition who gained prominence after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.
While Solano has made abstract works on paper throughout her life, she began creating the sculpture for which she is best known in 1979. Her first solo exhibition was in 1980 at the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, and included a group of brass-and-wood sculptures and sewn-canvas wall hangings. Thereafter her work continued to encompass a range of materials typically associated with modernist sculpture, such as iron, steel, lead, glass, and wire mesh. Through her manipulations and juxtapositions of these materials, however, her sculpture developed to become more evocative of structures found in nature or in domestic settings, such as a bridge or a table. She focused on their potential symbolic meanings by creating works that are formally rigorous and imposing in scale and materiality. Distinct from her Catelonian predecessor Julio González and the American Minimalist sculptors working just before her, Solano constructs her abstract metal sculptures as autonomous, enclosed receptacles, often reminiscent of cages, in which inaccessible interior space plays an essential role. In addition, her human-scaled works are often handmade; the traces of her processes, such as welding marks, folds, stains, and scratches, are frequently left visible on the surface. Early in her career, Solano was included in two major German exhibitions, Skulptur Projekte Münster and Documenta 8 in Kassel, Germany (both 1987), as well as the So Paulo Biennial (1987). Soon thereafter, she was one of two sculptors that represented Spain at the Venice Biennale (1988). Solano's first major exhibition in the United States was at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1988), followed by solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (1989–90), and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1991). Solano's first retrospective was hosted by the Museo nacional centro de arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (1992). The following year she had solo exhibitions at Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden, and the Whitechapel Gallery, London. The McKee Gallery hosted her first New York solo show (1996). That same year her work was featured at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin, and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (MUMOK), Vienna. Solano's drawings, sculptures, photographs, and installations have also been exhibited in solo presentations at the Museu d'art contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) (1999); Sintra museu de arte moderna, Sintra, Portugal (2001); Museo nacional centro de arte Reina Sofía (2003); and the Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO), Madrid (2007). Solano lives and works in Barcelona.