Transfigured

Born in Taiwan and educated in Tokyo, sculptor Leo Amino immigrated to the United States in 1929. Following his service as a translator in the United States Navy during World War II, Amino began his pioneering experiments using synthetic resin, noting that “dealing with transparency, one becomes very conscious of the effects of different kinds of light.”

At Black Mountain College, Amino was one of three faculty members of color to teach at the celebrated summer institutes, which attracted an orbit of talented individuals from around the world and often produced unexpected collaborations between artists, architects, dancers, poets, and thinkers. Amino taught sculpting in wood during the 1946 summer session, joining a faculty that included painters Jean Varda and Jacob Lawrence, and returned to campus in the summer of 1950. At BMC, Amino found the freedom to be creative among young artists born in the United States and exiles and refugees from the Bauhaus. As with so many of his abstract resin sculptures, Transfigured, executed in 1950, is characterized by its expressive form and fluidity.