David Rabinowich

David Rabinowitch was born in Toronto in 1943 and died in 2023. 

David Rabinowitch first came to prominence on the American art scene as a member of the London, Ontario, artistic community centered around Greg Curnoe and recognized in the exhibition The Heart of London (1968) at the National Gallery of Canada. Rabinowitch was interested in the way sculpture could engage the viewer across time and space. His “Romanesque” sculptures, made from flat steel masses whose horizontality is disrupted by vertically perforated openings, function as zones of perception in which the appearance of the sculpture changes according to the viewer’s position. As the viewer moves around the work, it continually changes, revealing a series of different appearances. 

Rabinowitch further developed this idea during his residency at Atelier Calder, in connection with a project at the Chartreuse du Liget in Touraine. From the site, he proposed a series of drawings outlining a possible monumental sculpture unfolding across several areas of its grounds. The spatial arrangement of the proposed work echoed the investigations the artist had pursued for many years. Atelier Calder later published a catalogue in 1996 documenting the research undertaken by the artist, David Rabinowitch, Construction pour la Chartreuse du Liget (1994).