Storm King installs sky-high sculpture by Mark di Suvero

The American artist Mark di Suvero has been an intrinsic part of upstate New York’s Storm King Art Centre since the late 1960s, when its late co-founder Ralph Ogden bought the six-tonne political work Mother Peace (1969-1970)—a monolithic three-dimensional peace sign that is visible to anyone travelling to the Hudson Valley from New York City.

Today, the sculpture park debuted a work that has never been shown in the US and the tallest that the artist devised in his career. Called E=MC2, the nearly 100 ft-tall steel work was made between 1996-97 in the artist’s French studio in Chalon-sur-Soâne, and has been installed in Valenciennes for the past decade after being shown in Paris in the late 1990s. In New York, the work will be installed in the centre’s panoramic South Fields, where for the next three years it will be flanked by eight other large-scale sculptures from various stages of the artist’s career.

The centre currently holds four other sculptures by the artist in its permanent collection: Mon Père (1973-75), Mozart’s Birthday (1989), Pyramidian (1987/1998) and Mahatma (1978-79). Other works on temporary loan in the centre include She (1977-78), For Chris (1991), Frog Legs (2002) and Figolu (2005-11).

In an interview from the centre’s archive, the artist said: “Having a piece at Storm King is like having jewels in velvet. You look at it, and you feel the goodness of the landscape, of the sense of space, the sky that comes with it…”