University of Pennsylvania
Locust Walk
Weighing over 25 tons, Covenant, the creation of Alexander Liberman (1912-1999) was commissioned as part of the university’s fulfillment of the Redevelopment Authority’s Percent for Art requirement.
Alexander Liberman’s sculpture has been described as so “wildly asymmetrical” that every change in the viewer’s angle of perception alters the apparent axes. During his long career, his sculpture became increasingly monumental, and he characterized his larger works as a kind of “free architecture” that should have the impact of a temple or cathedral. In Covenant Liberman specifically intended to convey a feeling of unity and spiritual participation. The installation in 1975 was assisted by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Alexander Semeonovitch Liberman (September 4, 1912 – November 19, 1999) was a Russian-American magazine editor, publisher, painter, photographer, and sculptor. He held senior artistic positions during his 32 years at Condé Nast Publications.
Liberman was born in a Jewish family in Kiev. When his father took a post advising the Soviet government, the family moved to Moscow. Life there became difficult, and his father secured permission from Lenin and the Politburo to take his son to London in 1921.
Liberman was educated in Russia, England, and France, where he took up life as a “White Émigré” in Paris.
After emigrating to New York in 1941, he began working for Condé Nast Publications, rising to the position of editorial director, which he held from 1962 to 1994.
Only in the 1950s did Liberman take up painting and, later, metal sculpture. His highly recognizable sculptures are assembled from industrial objects (segments of steel I-beams, pipes, drums, and such), often painted in uniform bright colors. In a 1986 interview concerning his formative years as a sculptor and his aesthetic, Liberman said, “I think many works of art are screams, and I identify with screams.”