John Chamberlain (b. 1927) studied at The Art Institute of Chicago and Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Since the beginning of his career in the 1950s, Chamberlain has worked with crushed ribbons of steel to construct his sculptures. Exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, Chamberlain's work has been included in the São Paolo Bienal (1961, 1994), the Venice Biennale (1964), the Whitney Biennial (1973, 1987) and Documenta, Kassel, Germany (1982). The artist has been the subject of over 100 solo shows, traveling exhibitions and retrospectives including ones at the Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands (1996), the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany (1991), the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, Germany (1991), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1986), and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1971).

John Chamberlain's work is in numerous museum collections worldwide including The Art Institute of Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; Dia Art Foundation: Beacon; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

John Chamberlain has been twice awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1966 and 1977) and in 1990 was elected a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York. Some years following his residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, Chamberlain received the school's 1993 Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, and in the same year was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture from the International Sculpture Center, Washington, DC. In 1997 Chamberlain was named a recipient of The National Arts Club Artists Award, New York, and in 1999 he received the Distinction in Sculpture Honor from the Sculpture Center, New York.