Untitled (Jazz at Lincoln Center)

Joel Shapiro’s works on paper are composed of carefully choreographed geometric forms that take on attributes of the human figure. Created from a palette of simple shapes and basic colors, they are surprisingly expressive of the body in motion. Like his sculptures, these works bridge the gap between abstraction and figuration. Interestingly, Shapiro says he does not use his drawings or prints as studies for sculpture. Rather, he says, a two-dimensional work might serve as “a means of defining what the sculpture was about, as a clarification of thought.”