Robert Carlton Breer Bio/Wiki, Net Worth, Married 2018
Robert Carlton Breer (September 30, 1926 – August 11, 2011) was an experimental filmmaker, painter, and sculptor."A founding member of the American avant-garde," Breer was most well known for his films, which combine abstract and representational painting, hand-drawn rotoscoping, original 16mm and 8mm film footage, photographs, and other materials. His aesthetic philosophy and technique were influenced by an earlier generation of abstract filmmakers that included Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling, Walter Ruttmann, and Fernand Léger, whose work he discovered while living in Europe. Breer was also influenced by the concept of Neo-plasticism as described by Piet Mondrian and Vasarely.After experimenting with cartoon animation as a child, he started making his first abstract experimental films while living in Paris from 1949 to 1959, a period during which he also showed paintings and kinetic sculptures at galleries such as the renowned Galerie Denise René.Breer explained some of the reasons behind his move from painting to filmmaking in a 1976 interview:This was 1950 or '51... I was having trouble with a concept, a very rigid notion about painting that I was interested in, that I was involved with, and that was the school of Mondrian. [...] The notion that everything had to be reduced to the bare minimum, put in its place and kept there. It seemed to me overly rigid since I could, at least once a week, arrive at a new 'absolute.' I had a feeling there was something there that suggested change as being a kind of absolute. So that's how I got into film.Breer also taught at Cooper Union in New York from 1971 to 2001.Breer died on August 11, 2011 at his home in Tucson.Scholarly publications on Breer's work and interviews with the artist can be found in Robert Breer, A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers by Scott MacDonald, An Introduction to the American Underground Film by Sheldon Renan, Animation in the Cinema by Ralph Stephenson, and Film Culture magazine.Breer won the 1987 Maya Deren Independent Film and Video Artists' Award, presented by the prestigious American Film Institute.His film "Eyewash" was included in Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film 1947-1986.
In all my work I tried to amaze myself with something, and the only way you can amaze yourself is to create a situation in which an accident can happen.
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Fact
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Returned to the U.S. in 1959 and began collaborating with Pop artists like Claes Oldenburg. Later taught film at NYC's Cooper Union for for 30 years.
2
Attended Stanford University, where he switched from engineering to art, heavily influenced by the work of abstract artist Piet Mondrian. After graduating in 1949, he moved to Paris.
3
His father, Carl, an automotive engineer who designed the Chrysler Airflow, also invented a personal 3-D camera that he used to document family vacations.
$600,000
