Stapatis (Indian Sculptors)
Stapatis were classified into four types on the basis of their functions. These four types are: the stapati, the sutragraahi, the vardhahi, and the dhakshakan. The stapati was the chief architect and sculptor.
Next to the stapati in status was his son or sishya called the sutragraahi (holder of the sutra or thread). The sutragraahi measured the dimensions of the construction, and carried out the instructions of the stapati. The other two, the Vardhahi and the Dhakshkaan, were the craftsmen who actually did the carving of the images in stone or wood. One can assume, then, that the smallest group would consist of at least four members for building a temple or temple chariot.
The word 'artist', in current English, often refers to modern artists like Piccaso or Rodin who created new artistic forms. But the greatest Indian artists worked within religious traditions.. There is no doubt that the South Indian sculptors produced great works of art even when they worked within the mainstream of tradition. The skill was passed from artist to his son or pupil, and thus traditions were maintained for centuries.
These sculptors maintain rules while sculpting most deities are to be made in the nine- or the ten-face-lengths the nava taala or the dasa taala. The face length is divided into three equal parts, viz. the forehead, the nose, and from the end of the nose to the chin. The total height of the image from head (excluding hair and crown) to feet is divided into half at the lower hip.
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Donatello 1386-1466 Italian Sculptor was the most imaginative and versatile Florentine sculptor of the early Renaissance, famous for his rendering of human character and for his dramatic narratives. He achieved these ends by studying ancient Roman sculpture and amalgamating its ideas with an acute and sympathetic observation of veryday life. Together with Alberti, Brunelleschi, Masaccio and Uccello, Donatello created the Italian Renaissance style, which he introduced to Rome, Siena and Padua at various stages of his career. He was long-lived and prolific: between 1401 and 1461 there are 400 documentary references to him, some for nearly every year.
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Eric Gill (1882-1942)
Eric Gill is one of the best-known artists of his time. As well as sculpture, he worked in typography and black and white art. He had a particular reputation for his erotic drawings, and worked in a flowing, elegant style that has similarities to art deco. He was born in Brighton,
working for Monotype and designing popular typefaces such as Perpetua and Gill sans serif. It was only in 1910 that he began to make sculptural works.
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Jacob Epstein, one of the greatest representative sculptors of the 20th Century, was born in New York, and came to Europe only in the early 1900s - first to Paris in 1902, and then settling in London in 1905. His oeuvre includes many portrait busts, carvings, and large symbolic figures.
His smaller portrait busts can be seen in many of the great public collections. Among his most important outdoor works, St Michael casting down Satan is on the wall of the new Coventry Cathedral, and other pieces are in the bombed shell of the old Cathedral there.
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David Wynne (b. 1926)
David Wynne was born in London, and seems to have had no formal art training. His figurative sculpture concentrates on movement, and includes most notably Girl With Doves (1970), The Dancers (1971) and Dancer with Bird (1975), all in Cadogen Square Gardens. Other works in London are Girl with a Dolphin and Boy with a Dolphin, the latter being at the Chelsea School of Art. In the 1950s Wynne was concerned mainly with animal sculptures, and his Guy the Gorilla is in the Crystal Palace Gardens
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Sir Charles Wheeler PRA (1892-1974)
The sculptor Charles Wheeler specialised in portraiture and architectural sculpture. There are many works by him in London, dating from the 1930s through to several only placed in 1975, the year after his death. From the 1930s are his figures for the Bank of England, including those on the front, and the figure of Ariel on the dome at the corner of Princes Street and Lothbury Street. The gilded Springbok on South Africa House also dates from this period (1934). His most familiar work is the western fountain figures (1948) in Trafalgar Square (the eastern ones are by William McMillan), and the portrait sculpture of Jellicoe in the Square is also by him. In the 1950s he produced the monumental figures Earth and Water on the modern MOD building in Horseguards Avenue, and in George Square off Lombard Street is his Poseidon group of 1969. In the same square is his Hercules and the
Lion (1970s), and in Lombard Street itself is his St George and the Dragon. |
 
Sir William Reid Dick RA (1879-1961)
The sculptor William Reid Dick is responsible for various human and animal statues in London. He was sculptor to King George VI, and became ARA in 1921, RA in 1928. The sculptures by Blackfriars Bridge (Unilever House) are his, as is the eagle on the Royal Air Force Monument on the Embankment. In Regents Park is his Boy with Frog fountain (1936). He was also the sculptor of the imposing Roosevelt in Grosvenor Square, the George V by the House of Lords, and John Soane at the Bank of England. |
| Filippo Di Ser Brunellesco
(1377-1446), sculptor, architect, and artisan-engineer, is given credit for the invention of linear perspective. Here he is looking up at the famous dome he built for the Duomo (1418-1436) in Florence. He also built San Lorenzo and many other structures. |
| Henry Moore (1898-1986) was the most celebrated sculptor of his time, and the second part of his career, in particular, demonstrated that Modernist sculpture was, after all, surprisingly adaptable to official needs. |
Alexander Calder 1898-1976
The dynamic career and incomparable achievements of one of this century's most innovative and important sculptors, Alexander Calder, is celebrated in this stunning retrospective.The 260 works on view span the length of Calder's prolific career, during which he created some 16,000 objects, including 4,000 pieces of sculpture. Included are paintings and works on paper that reflect Calder's talents in whose disciplines, and wire constructions, standing mobiles, stabiles, constellations, towers, jewelry and mobiles - including the monumental "Untitled" of 1876 that graces the enormous atrium of the gallery's East Building. Many of the works are from private collections and rarely exhibited.
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Algardi,Alessandro 1598-1654
Born in Bologna, Algardi studied at the academy of the Carracci and with minor local sculptors. He served Ferdinando Gonzaga in Mantua for a few years, but in 1625, after a brief detour to Venice, he moved to Rome, where he remained for the rest of his highly successful career. Like his rival Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Algardi sought commissions from churches and the nobility, soon winning a roster of illustrious patrons for his religious and mythological subjects and portrait busts.
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