Space, Light, Structure-The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta

Catalogue of a major retrospective exhibition in Oakland and New York. Margaret De Patta is one of the most influential American women jewelers. One of the participants of the cult exhibit Modern Handmade Jewelry organized by MoMA in 1946 De Patta's work is highly collected and now housed in many museums, including MoMA, MFA Boston, Guggenheim and the Art Institute of Chicago. Accompanies exhibitions at both the Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, February - May 2012 and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, June - September 2012 This publication is the catalogue of a retrospective exhibition on the work of pioneer jeweler Margaret De Patta. A seminal figure in the American Modernist Jewelry movement, De Patta trained as a painter in the Bay Area and at the Art Students League in New York. She began studying jewelry design in San Francisco, but her major learning experience was at Lazlo Moholy-Nagy's School of Design in Chicago (1940-41). Distinguished as one of the few American jewellers whose work and ideas were allied to the evolving ideas presented in the modern art movement, De Patta's work was heavily influenced by the Constructivists and features architectural forms with simple lines, structure, and often movable parts. Space - Light - Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta features more than sixty jewelry pieces as well as ceramics, flatware, photographs, pictograms, and newly released archival material.