Claus Bury

Claus Bury (born March 29, 1946) is a German artist best known for his monumental architecture and public art installations. Bury was also a notable goldsmith and jeweler, and was known for his detailed geometric designs.

Early life and background

Claus Bury was born in Meerholz, Germany on March 29, 1946. Bury came from a long line of goldsmiths, and his ancestor Jean-Jacques Bury moved from Strasbourg to Hanau in the mid 18th Century and became a teacher at the National Drawing Academy in 1772. He completed an apprenticeship as a goldsmith at the National Drawing Academy of Hanau from 1962 to 1965, before attending the Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences from 1965 to 1969.

Career

After completing his studies at Pforzheim, Bury began travelling the world to exhibit his jewelry and teach jewelry-making. He began experimenting with different techniques and the fine arts in the early 1970s, using materials such as plastic, plexiglass and acrylics in combination with more traditional materials such as gold and silver. His meticulous, blue-print designs and drawings were based on various tenets of mathematics and engineering as well as observation of nature.

Bury collaborated with Australian artist Dorothy Erickson on the Noojee Sculpture Workshop in 1978.

Large-scale public installations

Bury began producing large sculpture installations in 1975, making sculptures for both urban and rural installations. That same year, Bury accepted an invitation to teach sculpture at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, and later accepted an invitation teaching at the Goethe-Institut in Australia. He began sculpting in wood in 1980, and this is his preferred medium for public installations. Some of Bury's more well known sculptures include the Bitterfeld Arch in Bitterfeld-Wolfen.

Later life

Bury was Professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg from 2003 to 2011.

Style and influences

Claus uses materials such as gold and plastic in his jewelry, and is noted for his geometric designs. Much of the jewelry produced by Bury is based on the appearance of technological gadgets and mechanisms. Sally Bradberry, in a 1975 Design Council, described Bury's jewelry design as a commentary on the machine age

Bury's sculpture features geometric shapes such as rhombuses, pyramids, rectangles and cubes. Egyptianesque and Classical architecture have also greatly influenced Bury's public installations. The influence of mathematics and engineering on Bury's work has been well documented. In The Fabulous Fibronacci Numbers, Posamentier and Lehmann demonstrated that Bury based some of his sculptural works on the Fibonacci numbers.

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