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Helaine Blumenfeld (born 1942) is an American sculptor who creates works primarily in marble and bronze but also in granite and steel. She lives in the United Kingdom and works there and in Pietrasanta, in Tuscany in central Italy. Examples of her work are in the collections of Clare College, Cambridge, the Courtauld Gallery, the Smithsonian and the Tate. Amongst her large-scale public sculptures are Family (granite) in Henry Reuss Federal Plaza in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Tempesta (marble) at The Lancasters, London; and Fortuna (bronze) at Canary Wharf, London. A fellow and past vice president of the Royal British Society of Sculptors, Blumenfeld was awarded an Honorary OBE in 2011.

Life and career

Blumenfeld was born in New York City in 1942 and grew up in Jamaica Estates in the Borough of Queens. Her father was a builder. Her mother, a Russian émigré, was a poet and painter. She received her BA and MA from the University of Michigan and then went on to study for her PhD in political philosophy at Columbia University. After completing her doctoral dissertation, John Locke: A Science of Ethics, in 1964, she studied art in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under the sculptor Ossip Zadkine.. She held her first solo exhibition, a group of polished bronzes, in 1966 at the Palais Pálffy in Vienna.

Blumenfeld had met her husband Yorick in a New York bookshop while she was researching her PhD. They married when she was 20 and had two sons. Their elder son Remy, born in 1965, is a television producer. Their younger son Jared became an environmentalist and served as the EPA Administrator for California and the West under the Obama administration. The Blumenfelds moved permanently to Europe in the late 1960s, eventually settling in the Cambridgeshire village of Grantchester in 1970 where Helaine also has her UK studio.

A turning point in Blumenfeld's career came with her 1974 visit to Pietrasanta in Italy which eventually led her to add marble as one of her primary mediums. She had originally gone there to do bronze casting, but Alicia Penalba, another sculptor working in Pietrasanta, encouraged her to try sculpting in marble and introduced her to master carver Sem Ghelardini. Blumenfeld joined Ghelardini's Studio Sem and began learning stone-carving. At the time, she was the only woman working in the studio's marble yard. In the ensuing years she travelled back and forth from her Grantchester home to Pietrasanta to continue her work with Ghelardini. It was also in Pietrasanta during the 1970s that she met Henry Moore for the first time. He had come to the town to supervise two large-scale sculptures that Ghelardini was carving for him. In 1985 she had a joint exhibition with Moore entitled A British Dialogue: From Perry Green to Cambridge at New York's Alex Rosenberg Gallery. Twelve of her large-scale sculptures in marble and travertine were shown.

By 2013 Blumenfeld's oeuvre had encompassed over 65 commissioned works for public spaces and private collections. The later years of her career have seen several major retrospective exhibitions of her work including those at the Royal British Society of Sculptors (2008), Pietrasanta in the Piazza del Duomo and Chiesa di Sant'Agostino (2011), Salisbury Cathedral (2013), and Bowman Sculpture in London (2015). The London exhibition, entitled Helaine Blumenfeld - Henry Moore A Dialogue 1985–2015, marked the 30th anniversary of her first exhibit with Henry Moore. Hard Beauty, a documentary film on her life and work, was broadcast on Sky Arts in April 2018.

Honours

Blumenfeld was elected a fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculptors in 2000 and from 2004 to 2009 served as the society's as vice-president. In 2007 she became the first female recipient of the Premio Pietrasanta nel Mondo. She received an honorary OBE in 2011.

Gallery

• Angels: Harmony, Asthall Manor, Asthall
• The Chauvinist, in Cambridge
• Spirit of Life, Cass Sculpture Foundation, Goodwood
• Tempesta, The Lancasters opposite Hyde Park, London

References

1. ^ Department for Culture, Media & Sport (15 July 2011). "Internationally renowned sculptor receives honour". Retrieved 6 September 2018.
2. ^ The Fitzwilliam Museum (2008). "As seen by Helaine Blumenfeld". Retrieved 6 September 2018.
3. ^ Wright.Karen (9 June 2012). "Helaine Blumenfeld: 'Art is a commitment to risk, a reflection of life – nothing stays the same'". The Independent. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
4. ^ Lacey, Hester (7 July 2018). "The Inventory: Q&A with sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld". Financial Times. Retrieved 6 September 2018 (subscription required).
5. ^ Royal British Society of Sculptors (2018). "Helaine Blumenfeld FRSS". Retrieved 6 September 2018.
6. ^ Milner, Catherine (12 May 2010). "Taking Risks". Country Life, pp. 108–109. Retrieved via helaineblumenfeld.com 6 September 2018.
7. Watts, Michael (April 2017). "Lit from Within". Christie's Magazine, pp. 72–81. Retrieved via Newport News Public Art Foundation 7 September 2018.
8. Seyler, William C. (September 1965). "II. Dissertations Completed Since the Last Listing". The American Political Science Review, Vol. 59, No. 3, p. 784. Retrieved via JSTOR 6 September 2018 (subscription required).
9. Cass Sculpture Foundation. "Helaine Blumenfeld: Biography". Cass Sculpture Foundation. Archived version of 25 August 2011 retrieved 6 September 2018.
10. Krasny, Michael (2016). "Jared Blumenfeld Reflects on Six Years as EPA Chief for California and the West". KQED News. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
11. Cumming, Ed (19 September 2016). "A sculptor's space: inside the home of Helaine Blumenfeld". The Observer. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
12. Flynn, Tom (22 May 2015). Blumenfeld and Moore – a new dialogue. Wall Street International. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
13. Nandha, Tina (4 August 2018). "Flashback". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
14. Anderson, Susan Heller and Dunlap, David W. (16 February 1985). "Weight of the Art World". New York Times. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
15. Jolley, Ben (23 July 2018). "Exhibition of works by artist and contemporary sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld at Ely Cathedral". Ely Standard. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
16. Marin, Sergiu (2 September 2011). "A Pietrasanta la scultura è donna con le opere di Helaine Blumenfeld". Lo Schermo. Retrieved 7 September 2018 Template:It.
17. Hounsell-Robert, Katy (14 June 2013). "Outward signs of inner light". Church Times. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
18. s.n. (4 February 2015). "Henry Moore and Blumenfeld seminal works to go on show". BBC News. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
19. Edwards, Rupert (17 April 2018). "Helaine Blumenfeld: Britain's most successful sculptor you've never heard of". The Arts Desk. Retrieved 7 September 2018.

Further reading

• Upson, Nicola (1998). Mythologies: The Sculpture of Helaine Blumenfeld. The Overlook Press. ISBN 0879519118

External links

• Official website
• Bowman Sculpture has copies of the catalogs for several of Blumenfeld's exhibitions at the gallery from 2008 to 2015, including Helaine Blumenfeld - Henry Moore A Dialogue 1985–2015
• Hignell Gallery, Blumenfeld's representative since 2016, has multiple photographs of her sculptures

Media related to Helaine Blumenfeld at Wikimedia Commons

• American women sculptors
• 20th-century American sculptors
• 21st-century American sculptors
• Sculptors from New York (state)
• Columbia University alumni
• University of Michigan alumni
• Honorary Officers of the Order of the British Empire
• 1942 births
• Living people