Category: sculpture

Irina Nakhova

Irina Nakhova, “Pilot”, 2015, Installation at the 2015 Venice Biennale

“Pilot” is one part of a three-part installation “The Green Pavilion” presented by Russian artist Irina Nakhova at the Venice Biennale in 2015. It is a giant head of a helmeted pilot whose features subtly changed activated by sensors in the room to the movements of the viewers.

“When you walk into the first room, all the sizes are different, and who greets you there is the pilot. The pilot is your navigator through time. So when you are here, there is dark. The skies are closed, but you are in the cockpit of the flight. When you come closer to the pilot, his eyes open, he looks at you and he also looks at the sky, and you can see that the sky are opening [via a skylight]. Then you really see what’s going on, but it’s also like in a dream because there is no verbal communication.” -Irina Nakhova

An installation artist and academically trained painter, Nakhova combines painting, sculpture, and new media into interactive installations and environments that engage viewers as co-creators of conceptual mindscapes. A part of a new generation of Russian non-comformist artists now known as the Moscow Conceptual School, Nakhova received international recognition as a young artist for her first ‘total installation’ entitled “Rooms (1983-1987)”. She was chosen as the first female artist to represent Russia at its pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Thutmose III

Statue of Thutmose III (Birthname: Menkheperre), Karnak Cachette, Luxor Museum, Egypt

This statue of Thutmose III, carved from greywacke, a dark coarse-grained sandstone, was found in the Karnak cachette in 1904. His reign was from 1479 to 1425 BC in which he extended the reach of the Egyptian empire during his foreign military campaigns.

Reblogged with many thanks to http://bandit1a.tumblr.com

Source: grandegyptianmuseum

Trevor Leaf

Trevor Leat, “Calgary Stag”, Willow Wicker Sculpture

Trevor Leat  is one of the foremost creators of willow sculptures in the UK. Using traditional techniques combining beauty with functionality, Trevor Leat has been weaving willow to great effect for over 30 years. Although he creates baskets, garden furniture and even willow coffins, it is for his willow sculpture he is best known.

His work ranges from lifesize animals and figures, through to giant willow sculptures spectacularly burned at festivals and events such as The Wickerman Festival, The Edinburgh Hogmanay Celebrations and The Burns Light Festival in Dumfries. Based in coastal Galloway, Southern Scotland, Leat’s work is exhibited widely in galleries, and seen by tens of thousands at festivals and events around the UK and beyond.

Volodymyr Tsisaryk

Volodymyr Tsisaryk, “Jason and the Golden Fleece”, 2016, Bronze, 58 x 24 x 16 centimeters, Boccara Art Gallery, New York

Volodymyr Tsisaryk is a sculptor from Lviv, Ukraine,  who received his Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts at the Lviv State College of Decorative Art in 1999 and his Masters in Fine Art from the Lviv Academy of Arts in 2001.

Japanese Tsuba

Japanese Tsuba, Edo Period

The Tsuba is usually a round, or occasionally squarei, guard at the end of the grip of bladed Japanese weapons, like the katana and its various variations, the tachi, wakizachi, tanto, and others. They contribute to the balance of the weapon and to the protection of the hand. The tsuba was mostly meant to be used to prevent the hand from sliding onto the blade during thrusts as opposed to protecting from an opponent’s blade.

During the Muromachi period, 1333-1573, and the Momoyama period, 1573-1603, the tsuba were more for functionality than for decoration, being made of stronger metals and designs. With the peace in Japan during the Edo period, 1603- 1868, the tsuba became more ornamental and made of less practical metals.

Tsuba are usually finely decorated. Whole dynasties of craftsmen arose whose only craft was making the tsuba. These decorated fittings were often used as heirlooms, passed from one generation to another. Many Japanese families with samurai roots would have their family crests crafted onto a tsuba.

Marco Antonio Prestinari

Marco Antonio Prestinari, “Hercules and the Nemean Lion”, Date Unknown, Terracotta, Height 52 cm.

Marco Antonio Prestinari was born in Claino, a village in the Valsolda close to Porlezza, His first recorded works for the garden and nymphaeum of Pirro Visconti’s villa at Lainate, near Milan, are the marble statues of the “Nymph” in the centre of the large grotto in the nymphaeum,, and the “Adonis” originally in the same nymphaeum, but now located in the Louvre Museum. These statues can in all likelihood be dated to the mid 1590s.

The terracotta “Hercules and the Nemean Lion” is a preparatory model for a monumental sculpture in ceppo stone of the “Teatro d’Ercole” of the garden of Villa Arconati at Castellazzo di Bollate, near Milan.

Reblogged with thanks to http://bloghqualls.tumblr.com

Jean-Noël Lavesvre

Sculptures of Jean-Noël Lavesvre

Jean-Noël Lavesvre is a French painter and sculptor who is living and working in Paris. He began his career as a set designer and costume designer in 1984 at the Opéra de Marseille with La Traviata. Lavesvre designed the atmospheric sets for the Canadian Opera Company’s 2012/2013 season presentation of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Il Trovatore”. 

Raoul Hausmann

Raoul Hausmann, “The Spirit of Our Time”, 1920, Assemblage with Wooden Head

Rauol Hausmann was an Austrian artist, a founder and a central figure in the Dada Movement in Berlin. He began his formal training at the atelier of Arthur Lewin-Funcke where he focused on anatomy and nude drawing. He later connected with the German Expressionist movement, studying woodcutting and lithography under Erich Heckel.

In 1917, Hausmann met Richard Hulsenbedk, who introduced him to the principles and philosophy of Dada, a new and visual art and literary movement. Dada artists and writers created provocative works that questioned capitalism and conformity, which they believed to be the fundamental motivations for the first World War which had just ended, leaving chaos and destruction throughout Europe.

‘Spirit of Our Time’ was a sculptural metaphor for the inability of the establishment to inspire the changes necessary to rebuild a better Germany. This sculpture illustrated Raoul Hausmann’s belief that the average supporter of what he considered to be a corrupt society had no more capabilities than those which chance had glued to the outside of his skull; his brain remained empty. With his eyes deliberately left blank, the ‘Spirit of Our Time’ was a blind automaton whose blinkered attitude excluded any possibility of creative thought.

Adolf von Hildebrand

Adolf von Hildebrand, “Stehender Junger Mann ( Standing Young Man ), 1881-1884. Marble, National Gallery, Berlin

Adolf von Hildebrand was a German sculptor, working in the Neo-classical tradition. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg and at the Murnich Academy. Hildebrand designed the architectual setting for Hans von Marees’ murals in the library of the German marine Zoological Institute at Naples, Italy. He also executed a monumental fountain, the Witelisbacher Brunnen, In Berlin.

Centaur and Lapith

Centaur and Lapith, Metope South XXVII, Acropolis of Athens, Greece

The metopes of the Parthenon are the surviving set of what were originally 92 square carved plaques of Pentelic marble originally located above the columns of the Parthenon peristyle on the Acropolis of Athens. If they were made by several artists, the master builder was certainly Phidias. They were carved between 447 or 446 BC. or at the latest 438 BC, with 442 BC as the probable date of completion. Most of them are very damaged. Typically, they represent two characters per metope either in action or repose.