No. 366

As a student at Black Mountain College’s 1948 summer institute, Kenneth Snelson gravitated towards the eccentric inventor and teacher Buckminster Fuller. After returning to engineering courses at the University of Oregon, Snelson continued to make geometric models that explored the mechanical forces of push and pull. The following summer, Snelson hitchhiked back to North Carolina and showed Fuller his compression studies. Duly impressed, Fuller rechristened Snelson’s sculptures as examples of “tensegrity,” or tension integrity, and then adapted the concept to his own work without crediting Snelson. This untitled sculpture exemplifies Snelson’s skillful melding of art with science. Tubes of aluminum identical in length push outwards, while wires pull the structure inward providing the object with obvious stability and dynamic form.