Hanukkah Menorah
Gunther Aron
Created : 1970
Donated : 1993
Medium : Sculpture
Dimensions: 46 inx24 in
Located: 2nd Floor
Modeled Steel
Gunther Aron (b. 1923)
Santa Fe
Gift of the Artist
Gunther Aron was born in Germany and spent the war years in England, where he worked in munitions and attended night classes at the Leeds Art School. Since 1948, he has made his home in the United States. He studied at the Art Institute and the Institute of Design in Chicago. He has also worked both in jewelry and sculpture, but has devoted most of his time since the late 1950s exclusively to sculpture and Jewish ceremonial objects, in particular Hanukkah menorahs. To a large extent, Aron’s work has been an experimentation in creating motion and mass with lines and planes. His “direct modeling in steel” technique is well suited to that kind of investigation.
Since 1973, Gunther Aron has lived with his wife in New Mexico. At one time his home and studio was an old adobe schoolhouse in Lamy, New Mexico. He and his wife have since moved to Santa Fe.
Gunther Aron’s work has been reviewed in numerous publications and exhibited internationally. The Chicago Art Institute, the Museum of New Mexico, the Jewish Community Center of Dallas, the Museum of Berlin, and the Joods Historic Museum at Amsterdam are just a few sites of past exhibitions.
To bring a work to its completion, Gunther Aron believes in a strict, religious adherence to a dialogue between artist and work. According to Gunther Aron, “by careful scrutiny of the work in progress,” the artist must “elicit from it orders on how to proceed, what changes and/or additions are in concert with its quintessence and are also in harmony with the artist’s aesthetic sense and the degree of his visual and manual technique.” His sculpture clearly demonstrates his adherence to this method of working. His graceful modeling of steel is evidence that he pursues the medium with “integrity and without fear.”
