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Here you can find information about (life and) work of famous and less well-known sculptors. It gives you an impressions of their work and often you will also find the names of museums in which you can admire examples of the work of the artists.

Chris Booth

Chris Booth, (born 30 December 1948) is a New Zealand sculptor. Born at Kerikeri in the Bay of Islands, he was the 1982 recipient of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship.

Booth studied at the University of Canterbury's school of fine arts before taking two years of specialist sculptural study with such prominent sculptors as Barbara Hepworth and Denis Mitchell.

Booth's work – largely made on commission – is usually monumental in form, and can be found throughout New Zealand, Australia, Europe, and North America.

Booth was featured in the 1991 documentary film When A Warrior Dies which focused on his construction of a very large and imposing sculpture at Matauri Bay overlooking the Cavalli Islands for the Ngati Kura people of the district. The sculpture stands before the resting place of the MV Rainbow Warrior which was bombed and sunk by French Government DGSE secret agents in Auckland on 10 July 1985. The Rainbow Warrior propeller is in the centre of the sculpture, surrounded by an arch of large basalt boulders recovered from a local beach.

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Andreas Rimkus                                           

Who is Andreas Rimkus???

EuropaHammer

The Generational Work of Art, 1/7

Seven hammer heads are being forged. The hammer heads will be placed on all seven continents: Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, South America, North America and the Antarctic. Seven spades have also been forged. They will journey together with the hammer heads.
Seven times the spades will cut into the ground, to plant seven (Ginkgo) trees which will grow inside the eyes of the hammer heads.
In about two hundred years time each hammer will have its own handle.*
And Andreas Rimkus’s Generational Work of Art will be completed.**

*except for one
**almost

EuropaHammer

Das GenrationenKunstWerk, 1/7

Sieben Hammerköpfe warden geschmiedet. Auf allen sieben Kontinenten finden die Hammerköpfe ihre Plätze: In Europa, in Asien, in Afrika, in Ozeanien, in Südamerika, in Nordamerika und in der Antarktis.
Sieben Spaten sind dafür geschmiedet worden, sie werden mit den Hammerköpfen reisen. Siebenmal ein erster Spatenstich, um sieben Bäume zu pflanzen.
Sie werden in den Hammeraugen wachsen. In vielleicht zweihundert Jahren hat dann jeder Hammer seinen Stiel.* Und das GenrationenKunstwerk von Andreas Rimkus ist vollendet.**
* bis auf einen
**fast

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Auguste Rodin 

Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917) dominated sculpture at the end of the 19^th century and introduced modernistic elements. His works, that remind us of the expressionism of antiquity and the 16^th century, are complex.  His work links with the non finite-statues, the unfinished of Michelangelo.
Rodin brought monumental public sculpture into the modern era. Though he was well acquainted with the academic traditions and idealized subjects of classical and Renaissance sculpture, Rodin's aim in his work was to be absolutely faithful to nature.
Rodin was rejected from entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts three times, due to his earlier training at a technical school of drawing and mathematics. So instead, at the age of 24, Rodin studied under Barye, and several years later studied with Carrier-Belleuse.
He finally made an appearance at the Salon in 1875, and sculpted his first major piece, 'The Age of Bronze', in 1876.

  The age of bronze, 1876
In 1844 the town of Calais opened a competition for a monument commemorating the resistance of the town for eleven months against the King Edward in 1346-47. Rodin worked for ten years (1876-86) on a composition of the six burghers that were held hostage. The Municipality felt that the figures were not heroic enough, and many of his contemporaries did not understand his group. Rodin preferred to have the group stand on the soil, to become part of the population again, but this plan was not adopted.
The burgher of Calais, 1876-86

La Danaide, 1885  Eternal idol, 1889

The most remarkable event of Rodin's career was his work on the statue of Balzac. In 1888, the Societe des Gens de Lettres (the president was Emile Zola) had wanted the statue of the great romanticist for a site in Paris. Chapu had begun the project but had died in 1891. Rodin offered to deliver a statue in 18 months. Many years went by, and the delay became the butt of many jokes. There was a lawsuit, and in exchange for no time limit, he had to return the 10,000 francs advanced for materials. Rodin found that this was the most difficult sculptural interpretation he had ever undertaken. He wanted to create the great thinker in action, with all of Balzac's intensity. After years of various interpretations and studies of his subject, the statue was finally exhibited at the Salon of 1898. The Societe refused to recognize it as a statue of Balzac. The current president, poet Jean Aicard, resigned as a result. The commission for a new statue was awarded to Alexandre Falguiere. Rodin did not fight the Societe, and was invited to exhibit it in London and Brussels. He refused generous offers to sell the piece, but stated that it belonged to Paris.

       
The Society didn’t recognize the importance of Rodin’s statues. His uncanny ability to convey movement and to show the inner feelings of the men and women he portrayed, the bravura of his light-catching modeling, and his extraordinary use of similar figures in different mediums, have established him as one of the greatest sculptors of all time.

From left to right:
Madame de Morla Vichuna, 1884
Cathedral, 1909
Walking man, 1900-1907
   

    More Rodin? Click HERE

Legros, bust of Rodin

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Ulrich Rückriem

The German sculptor Ulrich Rückriem was born in Düsseldorf on September 30, 1938. From 1957 to 1959 he did an apprenticeship as a stonemason in Düren, and is assistant at the Cologne Dombauhütte in 1960-61. During this period he studies at the Cologne College of Art for two semesters under Ludwig Gies. From1961 he works as a free sculptor. In 1962 he travels through Southern Europe, Morocco and Tunisia. After having returned he lives in Nörvenich near Düren. His first one-man show takes place in the Leopold-Hoesch Museum in Düren in 1964.

Ulrich Rückriem's early works are open constructions of forms made of steel and wood. Later, mid 1960s he begins to use stone. In 1968 Ulrich Rückriem develops the method of separating and reassembling basic forms, alternating rough and smooth surfaces that reveal the work process as such, a method that is an integral part of his work. His stone sculptures were exhibited at the gallery Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf for the first time in 1969.

Ulrich Rückriem moves to Mönchengladbach the same year where he shares a studio with Blinky Palermo, a German abstract painter. Rückriem participates in numerous exhibitions. The great appreciation of Rückriem's work and the fact that he is regarded as one of the most important German sculptors of the post-war era is also demonstrated by his participation in several  Documenta exhibitions.

Ohne Titel, 1988
Ulrich Rückriem
granite
2 parts, each about 480 x 175 x 58 cm

Rückriems material is natural stone, his tools drills, chisels and saws. With great devotion he selects the rough stone at the quarry based on its colour, structure and shape. He then applies his well-known ‘divisions’ to the stone’s mass: horizontal splits in layers, vertical cuts, or a combination of the two.
By splitting and cleaving, and sometimes also polishing, he reveals the stone’s innate beauty. He then reassembles the cleaved or sawn parts – either entirely or partially – in their original shape. He leaves the traces of this process untouched, as they tell a story of the sculptor and the transformation from rough stone to work of art.
In 1988 Ohne Titel was created for the Sculpture Garden entrance (Hoge Veluwe, Holland) but now also marks the start of the walk.

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