Frank Gehry, architect inspired by carp swimming in his grandmother’s tub for gefilte fish, dies at 96

Frank Gehry, one of the most renowned architects of his era whose iconic buildings look like rolling sculptures, died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Friday. He was 96, the New York Times reported.

Known for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997) in Spain, Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) in Los Angeles and Fondation Louis Vuitton (2014) in Paris, among many other buildings, the artist was the “mind behind some of the most iconic architectural feats in the world,” according to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“Drawing on his working-class background, Frank’s designs embraced the reality of living and the beauty of the everyday,” Newsom stated. “His work encouraged imagination and freedom of thought, and recognized the value and the beauty of working people and neighborhoods, seeking to make room for everyone in this world—especially the misfits like himself.”

Karen Bass, mayor of Los Angeles, stated that the city “mourns the loss of one of its most beloved and impactful cultural giants.” Gehry was “not only a legendary architect, but a true visionary who transformed the way our city, and the world, sees and experiences Los Angeles,” she said.

“Frank’s imagination reshaped our skyline into something unmistakable, iconic and unique,” she said. “His genius knew no bounds, and he displayed a magnanimous love for the cities he worked in.”

She added that over more than 60 years, Gehry “made Los Angeles his home, his canvas, and his proving ground” and that he volunteered and developed housing for homeless veterans.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) stated that Gehry was the “most brilliant architect of our time,” who “had the greatest eye and most visionary mind,” but his heart “towered over every magnificent building that will forever carry his name.”

“When you talk about the most creative, world-changing Californians of all time, I know Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg and Steve Jobs may first come to mind. But always, always remember Frank Gehry,” the congressman said. “I know I will.”

“Frank Gehry was an architectural icon whose bold designs have shaped cityscapes all over the world,” stated Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister. “I send my condolences to his family and admirers. Frank’s work will continue to inspire generations to come.”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called Gehry “a gentleman titan of architecture and a master communicator of the future,” who “recognized that architecture is not just designing a building—it is creating a work of art.”

None of the politicians mentioned that the architect, who was born Ephraim Owen Goldberg in Toronto on Feb. 28, 1929, was Jewish.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) suggested that Gehry was a coreligionist without saying it outright.

“Today, we lost a giant of American architecture with the passing of Frank Gehry, whose iconic designs personified the creativity and dynamism of Los Angeles and California,” the senator stated. “May his memory be a blessing, and may his family, friends and all he inspired take comfort in the lasting legacy of his work.”

Daniel Libeskind, a renowned architect and the son of Holocaust survivors, told JNS that “even though Frank Gehry was reluctant to unveil his Jewish identity until later in life, his work displays subversion of convention.”

“That aspect is certainly a Jewish sensibility,” said Libeskind, whose many designs include the master plan for the rebuilt World Trade Centre site, Jewish Museum Berlin (2001), San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum (2008) and the Wohl Centre (2005) at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel.

“He was renowned and remarkably successful in changing the image of architecture and paving the way for a more unorthodox approach,” Libeskind told JNS of Gehry.

Fish scales

When Gehry was growing up, his father moved the family to an Ontario mining town, where he supplied slot machines to local establishments until gambling became illegal there, according to the Jewish Museum in New York. The Goldbergs then moved to Los Angeles, where the artist studied architecture at University of Southern California. Before he graduated, he changed his name in 1954.

“He had been picked on as a child and wanted to be admitted to the university’s architectural fraternity,” the Jewish Museum said.

He subsequently studied at Harvard Graduate School of Design and then returned to California, where after working at other firms, founded Frank O. Gehry & Associates in 1962. In 2002, he created Gehry Partners.

The Jewish Museum showed “Fish Forms: Lamps by Frank Gehry” from Aug. 29 to Oct. 31, 2010, which included “colorful, luminous lamps,” which, it said, explored “the significance of fish imagery in Gehry’s work.” The museum showed the lamps in “near darkness to create a gallery of glowing sculptural fish lit from within.”

According to the museum, Gehry broke a piece of ColorCore, a laminate product made by the Formica Corporation. The company had asked him to create something out of the material in 1983. “The resulting shards reminded him of fish scales and gave him the idea for the fish lamps,” the Jewish Museum stated.

“The lamps are beautiful, whimsical works from a mind of great ingenuity and creativity,” Ruth Beesch, deputy director for program at the Jewish Museum who curated the show, said at the time. “They are a fantastic blending of idea and material with the translucent shards perfectly fulfilling Gehry’s artistic vision.”

The museum said that fish forms had been an “indelible and vibrant element” of Gehry’s work since the 1980s and “embodied his desire to create motion in architecture and represented a perfection that he could never realize in his buildings.”

“At a time when architects were inspired by ancient Greek temples, Gehry said, ‘If you really want to go back into the past, why not do fish?’”, the museum said.

It quoted Gehry’s 1986 talk at the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis, during which he said that “in Toronto, when I was very young, my grandmother and I used to go to Kensington, a Jewish market, on Thursday morning.”

“She would buy a carp for gefilte fish. She’d put it in the bathtub, fill the bathtub with water, and this big black carp,” he said in the talk, “would swim around in the bathtub and I would play with it.”

Many medals for metalwork

In 2004, Gehry designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park—near Anish Kapoor’s reflective sculpture “Cloud Gate,” which is commonly called “The Bean.”

In 2020, Gehry’s Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial was finished in Washington, and the following year, he designed an interior expansion and renovation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which included a new cafe, whose ceiling evokes the architect’s iconic style—that resembles “undulating free-form sculpture,” according to Britannica.

The same year, a more than 150,000 square-foot tower that Gehry designed in Arles, France, a city associated with Vincent van Gogh, opened on the LUMA Foundation’s 27-acre campus. The foundation called the building a “twisting geometric structure finished with 11,000 stainless steel panels.”

“We wanted to evoke the local, from van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ to the soaring rock clusters you find in the region,” Gehry said at the time. “Its central drum echoes the plan of the Roman amphitheatre.”

Among many architectural and other prizes that Gehry won are a National Medal of the Arts in 1998 and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.

In February 2015, the Governor-General, Sir Peter Cosgrove, opened the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building at the University of Technology Sydney. Gehry’s sole buiding in Australia.

He is survived by his wife Berta Aguilera and their two sons, Sam and Alejandro; Brina Gehry, a daughter from his prior marriage to Anita Snyder; and his sister Doreen Gehry Nelson, according to the Times. The paper reported that Leslie Gehry Brenner, another daughter from his first marriage, died in 2008.

JNS