Wang Keping is a contemporary Chinese artist renown for his modernist sculpture works often with the female form. Wang Keping was born in Beijing, China in the year 1949.
His figures usually have increases focus in the legs, breasts, and butt. I find his figures to be very abstract like the English artist Henry Moore.
Here we view a great interview from 2009. Wang Keping talks about the Chinese art market:
Price range information: Works range from $10,000 to $150,000.
In this clip we view a gallery show featuring his work:
The artist is now based out of Paris, France.
Keping works with bronze occasionally but uses wood for the most part.
The artist was inspired by an artist recently featured here, Constantin Brancusi.
Barbara Hepworth was a British painter renown for her abstract style. Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born in Wakefield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England in the year 1903. The artist attended the Leeds School of Art and also the Royal College of Art.
Hepworth worked a majority of her career as a sculptor. A collegiate classmate named Henry Moore would be crucial in her development in the modernist movement. Moore has been profiled here already for his modernist sculpture.
Hepworth was married to a fellow sculptor named John Skeaping. After divorcing she then remarried artist Ben Nicholson. Though this marriage also ended in divorce, the couple did have triplets.
For much of her professional life she was based out of St. Ives, Cornwall, England.
She worked often with wood or bronze. Late in life she took up printmaking.
From the Tate Museum a brief biography about Barbara Hepworth:
John Tiktak was a great Inuit sculptor of the figure who was from the Rankin Inlet, Nunavut Territory region. John Tiktak was born in the year 1916.
Though he died in Ranken Inlet, John Tiktak grew up living the traditional Inuit nomadic lifestyle. In the 1950s he moved to Arviat, and began to carve. In the late 1950s he moved to Ranken Inlet to work in the nickel mines there. The mine closed in 1962, the next year he began to earn a living selling his sculptures.
Tiktak focused on the figure and became renown for his works containing multiple faces. I love these works as they represent the Inuit lifestyle perfectly. Many faces with various expressions carved from stone. The work could represent shaman or just a family.
The British sculptor Henry Moore, already profiled here was a big supporter of the work of John Tiktak.
John Tiktak was elected to the Royal Academy of Art in Canada in the year 1973.
John Tiktak passed away in 1981.
Price range information: Works range from $10,000 to $60,000.
Henry Moore was a British artist born in Castleford, Yorkshire, England in the year 1896. Moore was renown for working with the figure and in particular the mother and child genre. His father was an engineer in a mine but loved literature and the arts and exposed the artist and his seven other siblings to explore the arts. Moore was responsible for bringing modern sculpture to England much the same way Rodin brought modern sculpture to France.
Moore is best known for his work with the female figure. Rather than depict the entire form, Moore always leaves some space void or empty.
In this clip we see many of Henry Moore very large public sized outdoor works. Things to notice are the mother and child theme and the remarkable skill of the artist to depict drapery. When Moore was offered these very large sized commissions, Moore was able to make a substantial amount of money but lived frugally and saved most of his money to start an art foundation called the Henry Moore Foundation.
His favorite medium used were bronze and marble.
Moore joined the Army, but was injured in a gas attack. As he later told people the war passed in a romantic haze of him wanting to be the hero. After leaving the army Moore went to Leeds College of Art. Moore also studied at the Royal College of Art.
price range information: The artist has prints starting around $1,000. In June a bronze sold at auction for $5.8 million dollars.
Moore was also part of the teaching faculty at the Royal College of Art and later the Chelsea School of Art.
In this clip we view a show in Ontario with an interview with a curator.
Winner of International Sculpture Prize at the 1948 Venice Biennale.
Henry Moore passed away in 1986 at the age of 88 years of age.
Manuel Carbonell was a prominent sculptor who hailed from Cuba and went on to become a star in the art world. The artist was born in 1918 to a family that was involved in sugar plantations. As a kid the Carbonell enjoyed creating and starting making sculptures at an early age. When he was disobedient his parents forbade him to draw. The artist loved the process of creating, of having a fantastic image and idea in your head, and then executing the best of your abilities.
In this clip some outdoor sculptures. What a wonderful addition to any yard!
Another montage of works by Carbonell.
Price range information: Depending on size sculptures range from $5,000 to $50,000.
For his collegiate studies Carbonell attended the national school for the arts located in Havana, Cuba. Usually artists are given tests to see how much experience they have had. Carbonell told them he had no formal schooling, but had been sculpting since a young age. He showed them some examples of his work and he was accepted without having to take preliminary courses.
Whilst in college a great influence in his work was the sculptor Juan Sicre. Sicre was a student of Rodin’s favorite student Antoine Bourdell and made wonderful figurative sculptures. Below is a great example of Sicre’s style of sculpture. Sicre was born in Matanzas, Cuba in 1898. Sicre was a key figure in bringing the European and more modern figure art to Cuba.
In the forties and fifties Carbonell started to build an international reputation for life size, or larger than life size, sculptures celebrating religion and faith as well as the female form.
One piece titled the End of a Race, won an international art award and even appeared on the cover of Reader’s Digest.
In the 1950s Cuba was the Vegas of the Caribbean. Money and nightclubs popped up and Carbonell started his own furniture design company. For this company he was granted a visa to do some shopping for his company in Miami. He left for the states in 1959 and left all of his material possessions in Cuba and arrived in the states with only $200 in his pockets.
His big break came in the states when he gave a sculpture to his publicity agent as payment. A doctor saw it and told the agent he didn’t know he owned a Rodin. This doctor was his first large patron and started his collection by buying three pieces.
Carbonell was very prolific and continued to work until his early nineties and passed away at the age of 93 years old in 2011.
In comparing his art to another artist lets take a look at another sculptor of the figure in an abstracted form, Henry Moore. Moore was based out of Hadham, England. Moore knew that he wanted to be a sculptor at the age of eleven years old. Moore’s father was a mine employee and his parents thought that sculpting like Michelangelo was too time intensive and in fact just another form of manual labor. Here is a great example Henry Moore’s type of sculpture.
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