John Angus Chamberlain (April 16, 1927 – December 21, 2011)was an American sculptor. At the time of his death he resided and worked on Shelter Island, New YorkChamberlain is best known for creating sculptures from old automobiles (or parts of) that bring the Abstract Expressionist style of painting into three dimensions. He began by carving and modelling, but turned to working in metal in 1952 and welding 1953. By 1957, while staying with the painter Larry Rivers in Southampton, New York,[9] he began to include scrap metal from cars with his sculpture Shortstop, and from 1959 onward he concentrated on sculpture built entirely of crushed automobile parts welded together. Far more than just another wrinkle on assemblage Shortstop and subsequent works completely reinvented modeling casting, and volume altering Marcel Duchamp's notion of the readymade and using the car as both medium and tool.In 1962 Donald Judd wrote, «The only reason Chamberlain is not the best American sculptor under forty is the incommensurability of 'the best' which makes it arbitrary to say so.»By the end of the 1960s, Chamberlain had replaced his signature materials initially with galvanized steel, then with mineral-coated Plexiglas, and finally with aluminum foil. In 1966, he began a series of sculptures made of rolled, folded, and tied urethane foam.Since returning in the mid-1970s to metal as his primary material, Chamberlain has limited himself to specific parts of the automobile (fenders, bumpers, or the chassis, for example). In 1973, two 300-pound metal pieces by Chamberlain were mistaken for junk and carted away as they sat outside a gallery warehouse in Chicago.

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