Ronald Bladen - Navy Pier Walk 2011

Below are a few images of the Ronald Bladen sculptures.  Also, here is a statement about his work:

Ronald Bladen may have been one of the founding fathers of Minimalism, as some have called him, but that depends on what you mean by Minimalism.  Bladen (1918-1988) started making simplified, industrial-looking sculptures in the 1960's.  But Minimalism in the most thoroughgoing sense meant more than just extreme formal economy.  At its most radical, Minimalism tried to eliminate any dimension other than that of the immediate, material present, forcing concentration on the physical facts of the object and the space it occupied.  But Bladen, who was born in Vancouver and spent his formative years in San Francisco, where the Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still was the presiding spiritual force, was too much the romantic poet to be a pure Minimalist.
Ken Johnson, The New York Times, February 19, 1999