Sculpture
Looking to find a use for that extra clay, stone, plaster, or metal that you have lying around? Consider sculpture, in which artists employ these materials and others to create three-dimensional art. Perhaps you’ll join the ranks of noted sculptors such as Michelangelo, Auguste Rodin, and Donatello.
Sculpture Encyclopedia Articles
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Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brancusi was a pioneer of modern abstract sculpture whose works in bronze and marble are characterized by a restrained, elegant use of pure form and exquisite finishing. A passionate wood-carver,...
Donatello
Donatello was a master of sculpture in both marble and bronze, one of the greatest of all Italian Renaissance artists. A good deal is known about Donatello’s life and career, but little is known about...
Joseph Cornell
Joseph Cornell was an American self-taught artist and filmmaker and one of the originators of the form of sculpture called assemblage, in which unlikely objects are joined in an unorthodox unity. He is...
Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier was a prolific French caricaturist, painter, and sculptor especially renowned for his cartoons and drawings satirizing 19th-century French politics and society. His paintings, though hardly...
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. His...
ivory carving
Ivory carving, the carving or shaping of ivory into sculptures, ornaments, and decorative or utilitarian articles. Elephant tusks have been the main source of ivory used for such carvings, although the...
Andrea del Verrocchio
Andrea del Verrocchio 15th-century Florentine sculptor and painter and the teacher of Leonardo da Vinci. His equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, erected in Venice in 1496, is particularly important....
Futurism
Futurism, early 20th-century artistic movement centred in Italy that emphasized the dynamism, speed, energy, and power of the machine and the vitality, change, and restlessness of modern life. During the...
Henry Moore
Henry Moore English sculptor whose organically shaped, abstract, bronze and stone figures constitute the major 20th-century manifestation of the humanist tradition in sculpture. Much of his work is monumental,...
Joan Miró
Joan Miró Catalan painter who combined abstract art with Surrealist fantasy. His mature style evolved from the tension between his fanciful, poetic impulse and his vision of the harshness of modern life....
Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin French sculptor of sumptuous bronze and marble figures, considered by some critics to be the greatest portraitist in the history of sculpture. His The Gates of Hell, commissioned in 1880...
Lorenzo Ghiberti
Lorenzo Ghiberti was an early Italian Renaissance sculptor, whose doors (Gates of Paradise; 1425–52) for the Baptistery of the cathedral of Florence are considered one of the greatest masterpieces of Italian...
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most-influential artists of the 20th century and the creator (with Georges Braque)...
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas French painter, sculptor, and printmaker who was prominent in the Impressionist group and widely celebrated for his images of Parisian life. Degas’s principal subject was the human—especially...
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American artist best known for his innovation of the mobile suspended sheet metal and wire assemblies that are activated in space by air currents. Visually fascinating and emotionally...
Michelangelo
Michelangelo Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in...
sculpture
Sculpture, an artistic form in which hard or plastic materials are worked into three-dimensional art objects. The designs may be embodied in freestanding objects, in reliefs on surfaces, or in environments...
Western sculpture
Western sculpture, three-dimensional artistic forms produced in what is now Europe and later in non-European areas dominated by European culture (such as North America) from the Metal Ages to the present....
Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei Chinese artist and activist who produced a multifaceted array of creative work, including sculptural installations, architectural projects, photographs, and videos. While Ai’s art was lauded...
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Gian Lorenzo Bernini Italian artist who was perhaps the greatest sculptor of the 17th century and an outstanding architect as well. Bernini created the Baroque style of sculpture and developed it to such...