John Ernest (May 6, 1922 – July 21, 1994) was an American-born constructivist abstract artist. He was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

, in 1922. After living and working in Sweden and Paris from 1946 to 1951, he moved to London,

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, where he lived and worked from 1951. As a mature student at

Saint Martin's School of Art Saint Martin's School of Art was an art school, art college in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1854, initially under the aegis of the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Saint Martin's beca ...

he came under the influence of Victor Pasmore and other proponents of constructivism. During the 1950s, Ernest exhibited with the British Constructivist (a.k.a. Constructionist) art movement. Ernest later became a core member of the Systems Group. Ernest created both reliefs and free standing constructions. Several of his works are held at Tate Britain, including the Moebius Strip sculpture. He designed both a tower and a large wall relief at the International Union of Architects congress, South Bank, London, in 1961. The exhibition structure also housed works by several of the other British Constructivists. Ernest had a lifelong fascination with mathematics that is reflected in his work and, together with constructivist artist Anthony Hill, made contributions to

graph theory In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of ''graph (discrete mathematics), graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of ''Vertex (graph ...

, studying crossing numbers of

complete graph In the mathematical field of graph theory, a complete graph is a simple undirected graph in which every pair of distinct vertices is connected by a unique edge. A complete digraph is a directed graph in which every pair of distinct vertices i ...

s. Ernest was an atheist."A "practising" atheist, he was a person of great wit, warmth, generosity and hope." Terry Pope, 'Obituary: John Ernest', The Guardian (London), August 18, 1994, Features, Pg. T1

References

1922 births 1994 deaths American atheists American emigrants to the United Kingdom Alumni of Saint Martin's School of Art Artists from Philadelphia Mathematical artists American expatriates in Sweden American expatriates in France {{US-artist-stub