Tag: bronze

Romain Langlois

Stone and Bronze Sculptures by Romain Langlois

A self-taught sculptor, Romain Langlois studied medical books and anatomical charts to understand the human body, building his first sculptures using only plaster and clay. Seeking a more permanent material, Langlois turned to bronze, a metal he now incorporates into works that are inspired by nature rather than man.

His pieces visually pull apart the natural objects that surround us—building works that appear as bisected rocks, boulders, and tree trunks. These sculptures showcase glistening bronze protruding from their insides, unleashing the perceived inner energy of each object.

Keith Jellum

Keith Jellum, “Transcendence”, Bronze, South Park Building, Portland, Oregon

Keith Jellum hand fabricates and casts large scale sculptures and unique weathervanes in bronze, copper, and steel. Drawing on animistic themes, he creates one-of-a-kind artworks for both public and private locations.

Transcendence is an outdoor sculpture by Keith Jellum, located in Portland, Oregon, United States. It depicts a fish flying through the brickwork above Southpark Seafood at the northwestern corner of Southwest Salmon Street and Southwest Park Avenue in Downtown Portland. The sculpture measures 11 feet (3.4 m) long and is made of hand forged and welded bronze.

Dustin Payne

Dustin Payne, “Prairie Allies”, Bronze Monument

Dustin Payne represents the third generation of professional western sculptors in his family, so it comes as no surprise that the trade was a natural path for him. On his mother’s side he is a descendant of Hiram Daugherty and Mary Jane Goodnight, the sister of Texas Cattle King, Charlie Goodnight. Goodnight and Oliver Loving brought the first longhorns across country from Texas, inaugurating the cattle drive era.

As a child, Dustin enjoyed the drawings and books of Will James and was heavily influenced by the historical nature of his father and grandfather’s work. He feels fortunate that he has always been surrounded by such great artists and mentors, but more-so by being brought up around horses and ranching. His passion for the Western lifestyle and Western American history fuels his imagination to preserve the past in the art that he creates. He currently resides and works in Cody, Wyoming.

Jacob Epstein

Jacob Epstein, “Rock Drill” and *Torso in Metal from Rock Drill”

“Rock Drill” (c. 1913–1915) and the associated “Torso in Metal from Rock Drill” (c. 1913–1916) are Jacob Epstein’s most radical sculptures. “Rock Dril”l comprises a plaster figure perched on top of an actual rock drill. The combination of an industrial rock drill and the carved plaster figure makes the artwork an example of a ‘Readymade’ created at the same time as Marcel Duchamp’s “Bicycle Wheel” (1913). A 1974 reconstruction, by Ken Cook and Ann Christopher, is part of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery’s collection. “Rock Dril”l has been heralded as embodying the spirit of “radical Modernism more dramatically than any other sculpture, English or continental, then or since”.

Jacob Epstein (1880–1959) was an American-born sculptor who had moved to Europe in 1902, and taken British citizenship in 1911. Although Epstein was not officially a member of the Vorticists, not having signed the Vorticist Manifesto, the full-figure sculpture has also been hailed as the pinnacle of Vorticist art. Originally a positive statement, “Rock Drill” stood as a celebration of modern machinery and masculine virility. Wyndham Lewis described the sculpture as “one of the best things Epstein has done. The nerve-like figure perched on the machinery, with its straining to one purpose, is a vivid illustration of the greatest function of life.”

Javier Marin

Sculptures by Javier Marin

Javier Marín was born in Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico in 1962. He studied at San Carlos, the National Academy of Art, in Mexico City and has exhibited widely throughout Mexico with solo exhibitions at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, MARCO in Monterrey, and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Marin has been featured in over thirty solo exhibitions and participated in more that one hundred domestic and international exhibitions including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Working quickly, primarily in clay, Javier Marín does not refer to a model but instead relies on his remarkable knowledge of the human form gathered from years of drawing directly from the figure. Process is one of the artist’s most obvious passions, spikes of bronze are often left exposed to show the paths of molten metal flowing into the cast figure. During the creation of a work, words might be quickly inscribed onto the raw clay, holes gouged and support structures left exposed.

Anna Hyatt Huntington

Anna Hyatt Huntington, Bronze Monument on Audubon Terrace in Washington Heights

Audubon Terrace, also known as the Audubon Terrace Historic District, is a landmark complex of eight early-20th century Beaux Arts/American Renaissance buildings located on the west side of Broadway, bounded by West 155th and West 156th Streets, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan, New York City. Home to several cultural institutions, the architecturally complementary buildings are arranged in two parallel rows facing each other across a common plaza.

Commissioned in the early 1900s by Archer Milton Huntington (founder of the equally beautiful Hispanic Society, which owns the statues and the terrace on which they are located) and sculpted by his wife Anna Hyatt Huntington, the statues on Audubon Terrace offer a staggeringly wide array of choices for the modern palette.

Douglas Tilden

Douglas Tilden, The Mechanics Monument, San Francisco

At the age of five, Douglas Tilden became incurably deaf from a bout of scarlet fever. He graduated from the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb and Blind in Berkeley in 1879 and became a teacher there for the next eight years. The artist’s interest in sculpture did not develop until his early twenties, but his immediate talent in creating graceful compositions soon won him an award to study in New York City and Paris. These thirteen months, including five months as a student of Paul-François Choppin, also a deaf-mute, comprise Tilden’s only formal training in sculpture.

Tilden subsequently spent seven years in Paris, visiting museums and galleries and admiring sculptures by Auguste Rodin. Tilden’s well-known sculpture “The Tired Boxer” was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1890 and received an honorable mention, which was the highest prize ever to be awarded to an American sculptor at that time. Tilden is often called the “Father of San Francisco Sculpture” for the large number of commissioned public sculptures that you can still see today.

“The Mechanics Monument” was one of three major art works for the Market Street Beautification Project at the turn of the 20th century. Installation was started in 1899 with a dedication ceremony on May 15th of 1901. It was twice relocated, first in 1951 and then in 1973 to its present location on Market Street at the corner of Battery and Bush Streets. Cast of bronze, the full weight of the sculpture, excluding the base, is approximately ten tons.

 

Ljos Biró

Ljos Biró, “Pieta Torso”, Bronze and Stone

Born on October 9, 1959 in Csenger, Lajos Biró  is a Hungarian sculptor, painter and teacher. He first attended an industrial high school and later the Budapest Fine Arts College, with a three-year scholarship, graduating in 1988. After his studies, Biró married and lived in Mátészalka. Between 1989 and 1997, Biró taught at the art instate in Nyiregyháza. He has received several awards since 1986.

Botero

Botero, “Cat”, Rambla del Raval, Barcelona, Spain

Fernando Botero’s “Cat” was purchased by Barcelona City Council in 1987. From then until 2003, the cat wandered the city’s streets in search of a permanent site. His first stop-off point was the Parc de la Ciutadella, near his fellow animals at Barcelona Zoo. Then he was taken to a site by the Olympic Stadium, and a few years later he was put in a little square behind Barcelona’s medieval shipyards.

Finally, in 2003, the decision was taken to move him to a permanent location at the end of the newly created Rambla del Raval. The sculpture has become an integral part of one of Barcelona’s most widely redeveloped areas and is a favourite meeting place.

Henry Moore

 

Henry Moore, “Nuclear Energy”, Bronze Sculpture, The University of Chicago

On December 2nd of 1942, a team of scientists led by Italian émigré Enrico Fermi set the world’s first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in motion at Chicago Pile 1, the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor built under the original site of the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field.

This event was a decisive step toward the creation of the age of atomic energy, and critically, at the time, to the production of the atomic bomb for use in World War II. On December 2nd of 1967, the sculpture “Nuclear Energy” was unveiled on the campus of the University of Chicago as a memorial to the accomplishments of Fermi and his fellow physicists.

The twelve-foot tall bronze sculpture was commissioned by the University of Chicago and created by British artist Henry Moore, one of the most preeminent public sculptors of his generation. Moore designed, modeled, and cast the bronze sculpture between 1963 and 1967,  To Moore, it was both a celebration of this incredible human achievement, and also a warning against the dangers of harnessing such natural, physical power.

Winifred Turner

Winifred Turner, “Crouching Youth”, 1943, Cast Bronze and Plaster Model, 103 cm Height. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England

Winifred Turner, the daughter of the stone sculptor Alfred Turner, attended the Royal Academy Schools in London between 1924 and 1929. She was elected Fellow and Associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1930, exhibiting at the Royal Academy between 1924 and 1962. Turner taught at the Central School of Art and Design, a London public school for fine and applied arts, in the 1930s and into the early 1940s.

This highly stylised figure of “Crouching Youth” reflects Turner’s interest in ancient sculpture and also her passion for dance. The bronze has a green patina and smooth surface suggesting the sinuous forms of the young male body.