R o b i n s o n   F r e d e n t h a l    P o l y h e d r a l   E x p l o r a t i o n s
Biography

Robinson Fredenthal was born July 5, 1940 in Claremont, New Hampshire. His father, a painter, and his mother, a weaver and fabric designer, both graduated from the Cranbrook School of Art and have achieved wide recognition in their respective fields. His sister, Ruth Anne, a Bennington graduate and Fulbright recipient is a painter residing in New York. Fredenthal received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963 and went on to receive his Bachelor of Architecture at the same institution in 1967. At that time, the Architecture School was under the guidance and influence of two great men: Louis I. Kahn the architectural visionary and Robert Le Ricolais the structural visionary. The studio critics at that time were Romaldo Giurgola, Carlos Vallhonrat, Robert Venturi, Stanislawa Nowicki and Anne Tyng. In addition to his studies, Fredenthal was intensely involved professionally with these architects, building models for the competitions that led to their receiving contracts for some of the key buildings in development of their renown.
[from catalog of Reading Museum of Art, 1979.]
Portrait of Fredenthal by Ed Eckstein, 1984.

Professional History and Accomplishments

Education

U. of Pennsylvania, B.A. 1963; U. of Pennsylvania, B.A. 1967 


Public Sculptures

1989 "Blockhead", 8th and Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, PA
1984 "Black Forest", 34th and Walnut Streets, U. of Penn. campus, Philadelphia, PA
1983 "Double Agent", One Franklin Plaza, Philadelphia, PA
1983 "The Red Queen", Mantua Community Center Branch Library, Philadelphia, PA
1981 "Black Jack", Hilton Hotel, Allentown, PA
1980 "Untitled", University of Maryland, Catonsville, MD
1979 "Gate", Penn Square Center, Reading, PA
1977 "White Water", Philadelphia National Bank, 5th and Market Streets, Philadelphia, PA
1974 "On the Rocks", Roger Wilco, Inc., Rt. 73, Palmyra, NJ
1973 "Fire","Water","Ice", 1234 Market Street East, Philadelphia, PA
1973 "Untitled", 1111 East Touhy, Des Plaines, IL
1971 "Untitled", Woodfield Shopping Center, Schaumberg, IL 



Selected Group Exhibitions

  • 1991 "Philadelphia Art Now: Artists Choose Artists", Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
  • 1989 "Call to Rise", Organized by Humana Foundation, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL
  • 1986 "Art By Numbers: Systems, Spaces and Structures", Artmobile, Fine Arts Dept., Bucks County Community College, Newtown, PA
  • 1985 "Mathematics/Clarity of Thought", Lawrence Gallery, Rosemont College, Rosemont, PA
  • 1985 "The Cityscape in Three Dimensions - Philadelphia Panoramas"
  • 1984 "The Gift of Art", Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
  • 1983 "Sculpture/Penn's Landing", Philadelphia, PA
  • 1981 "Sculpture '81", Franklin Town Sculpture Show, Philadelphia, PA
  • 1980 "40th Annual Award Exhibition", Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center
  • 1980 "Sculpture '80", University Music Festival, Ambler, PA
  • 1980 "Fourth Annual Small Works Competition", 80 Washington Square East Galleries, New York, NY
  • 1979 "Artists of the Alliance Exhibition", Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA
  • 1979 "Philadelphia Art '79", Federal Complex, Philadelphia, PA
  • 1979 "Great Ideas Show", Cultural Affairs Council of Philadelphia, Independence National Historic Park
  • 1979 "Mid-Atlantic Regional Art Show", University of Delaware, Newark
  • 1976 "Three Centuries of American Art", Bicentennial Exhibition, Philadelphia Museum of Art
  • 1975 "35th Annual Exhibition", Woodmere Art Gallery, Chestnut Hill, PA
  • 1975 "Outdoor Sculpture", Philadelphia Museum of Art
  • 1975 "Earth Art 11", Children's Hospital, Junior League Award
  • 1972 "New Faces", Marian Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
  • 1971 "Concepts/Drawings", Marian Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

    
Lectures

  • 1986 Panelist, "Making Art in Adversity: Being Physically Challenged", College Art Association Annual Conference, New York.
  • 1984 Panelist, "Shaping Space - An Interdisciplinary Conference on Polyhedra", Smith College, Northhampton, MA
  • 1984 Lectures and Workshops for architecture and sculpture students, Penn State Univ.
  • 1984 Juror, "Show for International Disabled Artists," Moss Rehabilitation Center, Philadelphia, annually 1979-82
  • 1984 Lectures for Professor Ann Tyng's Theoretical Structures class, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania
  • 1967-Present Lecture/Seminars to all Foundation Program students, Philadelphia College of Art

    
Awards

  • 1979 National Endowment for the Arts 
    
Articles and Publications

  • Anderson, Peggy. "The Sculptor Who Measures His Genius by the Ton." The Philadlephia Inquirer Magazine, March 24, 1974, pp. 42-45.
  • Courtney, Julie. Philadelphia Art Now: Artists Choose Artists, exhibition catalogue, 1991.
  • Deming, Ruth. "A Career on a Roll." Art Matters December-January 1984, pp.1, 5.
  • d'Harnoncourt, Anne. Three Centuries of American Art, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1976, p.644
  • McFadden, Sarah. "Report from Philadelphia." Art in America, May/June 1979, p.27.
  • Richards, Paul. Robinson Fredenthal - Sculptor, exhibtion catalogue for University of Maryland, Catonville, 1981.
  • Sozanski, Edward J. "Penn's Landing Sculpture Show", The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 7, 1983, p.14-H.
  • Wasserman, Burton. "Exhibitions in Sight", Art Matters, June 1985, p.3.

    Writings About the Work

    The art of Robinson Fredenthal is rigorous, mysterious, elegant and modest. He is less an object maker than he is an explorer. Although he works with steel, with cardboard, with plywood, Fredenthal's true medium is the wholly immaterial. He is one of the most relentlessly inquisitive geometers alive. No artist of our age-not Tony Smith, not Sol LeWitt- has wrung more mystery than he has from the 90 degree angle and the solids that it breeds.

    He has a mystic's perserverance. Though Fredenthal investigates inherent properties of solids, he is no mere logician. Something in his method, his questing, his devotion, calls to mind an eremite pondering the endless meanings of the cross. His art is not quite rational; its peculiar balances and unexpected leanings frequently astonish. Nor is it wholly secular. One glimpses in his work the apotheosis of the cube.

    What can you do with cubes? You can stand them on their corners, slice through them with planes, rotate them or stack them. Cut a cube a certain way and you will find within it not just the 45-45-90-degree rectilinear geometries that you might expect, but 60-degree angles, equilateral triangles, rhomboids, tetrahedra. Still working in the cube, Fredenthal will choreograph these differing geometries until others less familiar are discovered in the dance. The far from simple sculptures that Fredenthal has drawn from such simple operations now number in the thousands. Some seem to contain angled little worlds, glowing stars of empty space; others lean like drunks about to topple over. Some are graceful, some seem awkward. No two are alike.

    Most, as of this writing, exist as models only. In sum they well may be his most important work. Fredenthal, who was trained as an architect, knows enough about industrial technologies and architectural scale to command fabrication of large public sculptures of power and distinction. The one trouble with such pieces is that they stand alone. His thought is like a tree; it branches and it penetrates and it leads he knows not where. One Fredenthal is not enough. It is better to see hundreds. Their differences, their echoings, their complex conversations, suggest an orchestrated growing. It is only his home, in Philadelphia on Samson Street, that Fredenthal's accomplishments can be fully seen.

    On the wood shelves of his workroom stand perhaps 3,000 small sculptures made of cardboard. That figure is not exact, for he no longer counts them, and more are made each week. They were made by his assistants with Exacto knife and straight-edge to his precise directions. Their materials, tape and cardboard, could not be more humble. Though some are large and some are small, they share a single scale and a single seed. All of them have grown from the 2.5" cube. Though their surfaces are dusty now, and their Scotch tape has yellowed, the ideal Fredenthal exhibit would include them all. Seen together they suggest the ordered wild richness of some complicated garden. The artist's public works, in contrast, because they are seen in isolation, look like potted plants.

    When I first encountered the mind of Robin Fredenthal (we were fellow students in the early 1960's at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Fine Arts) he was widely recognized as a budding architect of unlimited potential. But even then he seemed to be less an architect than artist. He always refused compromise. His unbending perfectionism was frequently remarked, as was his happy disregard for the blander aspects of the merely functional. No one in the architecture program for that matter, drew more delicately than he. And he seemed to have no fear. His teachers did not scare him, nor did the dreaded juries in which our works were judged. Nor did dizzying heights. I often saw him leap, for no apparent reason, from one rooftop to another while his more cautious friends stood below and gasped. He no longer draws with that light touch, no longer jumps from roof to roof. But mentally he ventures still where no one else can follow. He has not lost his daring. I know of no more acutely honed three-dimensional intelligence than that of Robin Fredenthal. I never tire of his work. Because it is never pompous, self-indulgent, flabby, I don't think that it will date. Its purity is brilliant. "Euclid alone," wrote Edna St. Vincent Millay, "has looked upon beauty bare." Robinson Fredenthal has seen it, too.

    (Paul Richard - Art Critic, Washington Post, 1981?; from exhibition text, Univ. Library Gallery, U. of Maryland Baltimore County)