Untitled, 1962, is one of Bontecou's signature works. It belongs to a small group of highly expressive wall-mounted sculptural constructions made between 1959 and 1967, and consists of welded steel parts, saw teeth, wire, and canvas arranged around a large black hole. In this body or work, the artist began with a heavy metal armature and built outwards, incorporating various industrial materials and objects--ranging from fan blades, saw teeth, screws, metal strapping, and zippers, to gas masks, pipe fittings, and helmets--to create highly disturbing structures whose physical force implied brutality and violence.

The sinister and dark quality of Untitled, 1962, could be seen in light of Cold War paranoia--it is the scale and complexity of composition, as well as its visceral power, that gives this sculpture a special significance. Somber, earthtones dominate the constructed assemblage, while extensive rust adds to its dramatic and menacing look. Seams form another important formal element here, dividing numerous compartments, but also creating an overall rhythm of the composition. Furthermore, its placement on the wall emphasizes the deep void on the surface, which resemble a gaping mouth with threatening teeth, thus increasing a sense of aggression and force.

Lee Bontecou was born in Providence, RI, in 1931. She studied at the Art Students League of New York and then went to Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship. Upon returning to New York in 1959, Bontecou started to work on abstract compositions in which welded steel and salvaged canvas, burlap, and tarp were sewn together with wire or zippers to create wall relief, first of a smaller and then of a larger scale. Gradually, she added other materials and found objects—such as rope, denim, leather, black velvet, pistol barrels, steel grates, and saw-toothed blades—creating impressive, bold pieces suggestive of a biting mouth or open wound.

Throughout the 1960s, Bontecou was one of the most successful artists of her generation and one of the few women artists to achieve broad recognition with her sculptural work. She was commissioned to make a wall relief for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York in 1964, and was awarded first prize in 1966 by the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In the late 1960s, she decided to retreat from the art scene, yet never stopped making art. Instead of large-scale sculptures, she concentrated on printmaking and drawings, while also teaching at Brooklyn College until 1991. An overdue retrospective of her works was co-organized in 2003 by the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and traveled to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The Bell Gallery sculpture was included in the retrospective.