Herbert Ferber; Abstract Expressionist Sculptor

Herbert Ferber, 85, an abstract expressionist sculptor. He was part of a small group of Americans who began to break with traditional notions of sculpture in the 1940s with open, airy forms that he said “pierced” space rather than displaced it. In 1960, he was credited with creating one of the first environmental sculptures intended for people to walk through. He was born in New York City in 1906 and studied dentistry and oral surgery at Columbia University. He continued to practice both dentistry and his art and had his first one-man show in 1937 using wood as a medium, but soon switched to metal. Among his commissions are a candelabrum and altar decoration for the chapel at Brandeis University, a copper sculpture for the John F. Kennedy Office Building in Boston, an environmental sculpture for Rutgers University and a steel sculpture for the American Dental Assn. building in Chicago. In North Egremont, Mass. on Tuesday of cancer.