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Eero Saarinen's radical and innovative 1948 design for what we now call the Gateway Arch made his name and propelled him into a leadership position among modernist architects striving to transform the postwar world.
St. Louisans can be forgiven if their knowledge of Saarinen is limited to the Arch. It is the most dramatic and visionary structure in the region, and probably Saarinen's most dramatic and visionary realized design.
But his brief career - he died at age 51 in 1961 of a brain tumor - was marked by many other radical and innovative designs. He was among the favored American architects of his time, and he received plum commissions from businesses, government, and institutions of higher learning and religion.
Saarinen appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1956. After the death of his father, Eliel Saarinen, in 1950, his large firm produced buildings for virtually every American constituency. Many of his mature designs, including the Arch, were not finished at the time of his death.
"Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future" opens Friday at the Kemper Art Museum. What we have to remember when we walk through it is that everything we see is the product of a first act.
Saarinen might have been popular with the public and those who commission buildings, but he was no darling of architecture critics. They lodged serious complaints about his departures from classical modernism and his willingness to let his design represent postwar American triumphalism. He never had a chance to respond to their criticism or to refine his work from direct experience of his completed buildings.
The exhibition was put together by four Finnish and American cultural organizations. It is on an international tour that has brought it to Helsinki, Finland; Oslo, Norway; Brussels, Belgium; and to Detroit. Washington and Minneapolis. It will travel to New York City and Yale University after it closes here.
In addition to a rich...