Ibram Lassaw (1913-2003) was part of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism during the 1940s and 1950s and one of the first abstract sculptors in America. Influenced by Surrealism, Constructivism, and Cubism, his brazed metal sculptures evoke cosmological and technological structures. Born in Alexandria, Egypt to Russian migrant parents, his family settled in Brooklyn, New York in 1921. Lassaw began to make sculpture in the late 1920s influenced by his study of art history and readings in European art magazine. He studied sculpture in 1926 at the Clay Club and later at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York while attending City College. He was one of the founding members of the American Abstract Artists in 1936, and later served as president of the organization. Lassaw's first retrospective exhibit was organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1957. His work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Harvard Art Museums, and many more.