Yuri "George" Schwebler (1942–1990), was a Yugoslavia-born American conceptual artist and sculptor.[1][2] He was active in the arts in the 1970s in Washington, D.C. and most notably in February 1974, he transformed the Washington Monument into a sundial.[1][3] He showed his work at the Jefferson Place Gallery.[4]
Yuri Schwebler | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1942-11-21)November 21, 1942 Feketić, Yugoslavia |
| Died | March 3, 1990(1990-03-03) (aged 47) Marlborough, New York, U.S. |
| Other names | George Schwebler |
| Education | McDaniel College |
| Occupation | conceptual artist, sculptor |
| Spouse(s) | Joanne Hedge (m. 1968–1970; divorce) |
Yuri Schwebler was born on November 21, 1942 in Feketić, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), and raised in West Germany.[1][5][6] At the time of his birth and early childhood, Nazi Germany occupied Yugoslavia.[7] In 1956, he emigrated and moved with his family to Wilmington, Delaware.[1] He graduated from Warner Junior High School and Seaford High School (in 1962) in Delaware.[6]
He attended Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College).[5] In 1965, Schwebler was drafted in to the United States Army Reserve.[7] After his discharge from the U.S. Army, he started using the anglicized name George Schwebler.[7] By 1967, he moved to Washington, D.C.[7] He had been married to Joanne Hedge from 1968 to 1970.[7] Together they moved to Marin County, California, and for a time he worked at the Sausalito Art Center [Wikidata].[7] When the marriage dissolved in March 1970, he spent two months at the Mendocino State Hospital before returning to Washington D.C.[7]
He moved to New York in 1980, and stopped making art around 1981.[1][8]
Schwebler died at age 47 on March 3, 1990 in Marlborough, New York by suicide and carbon monoxide poisoning.[1][9] He was survived by his partner, artist Enid Sanford, his mother Eva (née Lasi) Schwebler, and two sisters.[1][5][10]
His work was part of the posthumous retrospective art exhibition, Yuri Schwebler: The Spiritual Plan (2020) curated by John James Anderson at the American University Museum.[11][9]
His work Drawing Table: Table Drawing (1971), featured tools placed on a drawing table, and the surface of the drawing table has drawings of the same tools.[2] Other works include Range pole (1975) a plumb bob and a level placed in a glass and wood box;[2] and The Scale of the Horse (?) a small maquette of a horse, a device for enlarging the maquette to appear life size, and a final drawing of a horse. In 1973, Schwebler showed a series of large glass pyramid sculptures at The Phillips Collection.[5]
In a 1981 exhibition in the Hudson River Museum, Schwebler recreated of the art studios for sculptors Alexander Calder (In the Tracks of Calder), Piet Mondrian, Alberto Giacometti (Giacometti’s Table [Where Painting Meets Sculpture], 1981), David Smith and Constantin Brancusi but adding his own creativity on some of them.[2]
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