Helaine Blumenfeld, Girl Seated a la Japonaise Bronze Sculpture Morris Singer Foundry. 1964

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Girl Seated a la Japonaise, 1964, polished bronze. It was exhibited at The Chapman Gallery NYC in 1968. Cast at … Read more Girl Seated a la Japonaise, 1964, polished bronze. It was exhibited at The Chapman Gallery NYC in 1968. Cast at Morris Singer Foundry and numbered 4/6 signed with the artists monogram.

Helaine Blumenfeld OBE (born, New York 1942) is an American Sculptor working in Britain and Italy, best known as an artist who has pioneered new methods of carving in stone and for her semi-abstract marble, granite and bronze sculptures which are located around the world as Public art. Her forms are often abstractions of human forms and of elements in nature. She is widely recognized as the most significant sculptor of her generation and "the heir apparent to HenryMoore and Barbara Hepworth."

In 1973, Blumenfeld, who had recently moved to England, exhibited at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge England. These early sculptures, which were mostly cast in bronze were largely figurative work in the tradition of sculptors such as Constantin Brâncuși, Jacob Epstein, Jean Arp, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Henry Moore and of course her one time teacher Ossip Zadkine. In 1985, the Alex Rosenberg Gallery in New York showed her sculpture in dialogue with Henry Moore
In 1978, Blumenfeld's first visit to Pietrasanta in Italy marked a turning point in her work as she started carving in marble, mostly at Studio Sem, founded in the 1950s by Sem Ghelardini (1927-1997) who gained international notoriety producing the large scale works of Henry Moore, César Baldaccini, Emile Gilioli, Joan Mirò, Georges Adam and many other celebrated sculptors during the first wave of modern abstract sculpture in the 1960s.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Blumenfeld's sculpture, now less clearly figurative but still often of portraying couples and family units in multiple configurations, was exhibited at the Bonino Gallery in New York and in solo and group shows around the world. A member of the Visual Arts Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain between 1981 and 1988, Blumenfeld was elected a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors in 1993.

Blumenfeld has created over 80 large scale sculptures in bronze, granite, marble and steel in Europe and the United States for private and public clients, including the British Petroleum headquarters in London, the Lincoln Center in New York the Cass Sculpture Foundation at Goodwood and Family (Blumenfeld) at the Henry Reuss Plaza in Milwaukee and The Lancasters at Lancaster Gate in London. At Cambridge University, her sculpture has been commissioned by Clare Hall (Flame, 2004) and Newnham College (Esprit, 2004) as well as public sites around the city, such as at the corner of Brookland’s Avenue and Hills Road (Chauvinist) and at Vision Park, Histon (Shadow Figures.) In 2012 her work was exhibited by the Fitzwilliam Museum along with work by Peter Randall-Page and Kan Yasuda.
Blumenfeld's sculptures feature in many important public and private collections around the world, including those of the Courtauld, Tate, the Smithsonian and Clare Hall, Cambridge. In 2005, a seven-foot, £200,000 Blumenfeld bronze made for a show to commemorate the Holocaust was stolen from a warehouse in south London. It turned up in 2007 just five miles away, chained to a fire escape behind a block of flats.
Blumenfeld has served as Vice-President of the Royal Society of British Sculptors from 2004 to 2009. She is the first woman to be awarded the ‘International Sculpture Prize: Pietrasanta and Versilia in the World’ - an honour previously awarded to Marc Quinn and Fernando Botero. Blumenfeld has exhibited internationally and 65 of her large bronze and granite sculptures are in public collections. In 2009 The Financial Times described Helaine Blumenfeld's work as "the Henry Moores of the Future" Blumenfeld is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Leicester.
In 2008, the Royal British Society of Sculptors held an exhibition in Blumenfeld's honor and as an American citizen, she was awarded an honorary OBE by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. See less