Robert Rutman

Born in Berlin in 1931, he fled Nazi Germany as a child and arrived in New York in the early 1950s, where he moved in Abstract Expressionist circles alongside Jackson Pollock and Adolph Gottlieb. He turned to sound art in the 1960s and built the steel cello and bow chimes — large flexible sheet metal panels fitted with strings or rods played with a cello bow, which he called American industrial folk instruments. In 1976 he founded the Robert Rutman US Steel Cello Ensemble in Boston and performed at venues including Lincoln Center and the United Nations Sculpture Garden. He also toured and recorded with Einstürzende Neubauten, and died in 2021.