Antony Gormley

Description	Sculptor
Dates	1950-
Lived/Worked	India, London, Liverpool, Milan, New York, Italian , Regensburg, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Tokyo, Japan, New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, Paris, Salzburg, Montreal, Canada, Oktagon, Stuttgart, Germany, Konsthall, Malmo, Sweden, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Zagreb, Croati, Ville de Rennes, France, Prague, Czech Republic, Vienna, Austria, Cantz, Cologne, Germany

Best known for...

Antony Gormley is best known for making life-size figurative sculptures made from moulds of his own body. He would use heavy metals to cast that specific anatomy into powerful, mysterious figures, Gormley's work has enjoyed the kind of popular embrace that often attends such traditional forms and materials. Field is a more recent piece of Gormley's work located somewhere between figure and object. It is a series of projects begun in 1993, involving the creation - with local help - of tens of thousands of rough terracotta figurines in various locations across Europe and America. As each figure is hand-sized and hand-made, their cumulative effect is both personal and impressive. Field is a work about community and self-awareness, and about the relation between our own shape and the shapes of the things we make. also another one of his best know work is the towering figure, The Angel of the North which was completed in 1998 and stands outside Gateshead on the A1. It is constructed from the dimensions of his body and mathematically enlarged to around 65 feet high with a wingspan of 177 feet.

Why is he important?

Since the late 70s, British artist Antony Gormley has been internationally recognized as having breathed new life into the use of the human form in sculpture. Throughout his career, Gormley has used his own body as a model, the starting point from which to explore the relationships between bodies and the contexts, which they inhabit, primarily through the medium of sculpture. Over this time he has created some of the most ambitious and recognizable works of the past two decades including Field, The Angel of the North and, most recently, Quantum Cloud for the Millennium Dome in Greenwich.

Gormaly has created large-scale installations in Cuxhaven in Germany, at the Royal Academy in London, has participated in group shows such as the Venice Biennale and Documenta 8, and has had solo exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, the Serpentine Gallery and White Cube. His sculptures range from vast steel figures, to plaintive masses of tiny clay figures, with his archetypal life-size body casts somewhere in between.

Antony Gormley’s work is relevant to all key stages for many commonly studied topics. His art explores a range of issues that stretch across the curriculum. A visit to the exhibition could provide the starting point for a range of creative work, not just within art and design, but also within subject areas such as English, science, maths, physical education and citizenship.

Historical context

Sculptor Antony Gormley's work was influenced by modernist theory and non-Western religious studies. Antony
Gormley has selected works of art from the National Collection that he personally has found interesting or inspirational. He has chosen a particular group of works by Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo.

How to see his work

Public Collections:

Tate Gallery, London

White cube, london

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Contemporary Arts Society

Southampton City Art Gallery

Leeds City Art Gallery

Henry Moore Foundation for the Study of Sculpture

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

British Council

Arts Council of Great Britain

British Museum

Jesus College, Cambridge

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Jerwood Collection, Witney

Science Museum, London

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Lhoist Collection, Brussels, Belgium

Herning Kunstmuseum, Denmark

Louisiana Museum, Denmark

Sastamoinen Collection, Finland

Ville de Rennes, France

Neue Museum, Kassel, Germany

Stadt Kassel, Germany

Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland

Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel

Tokyo City Opera, Japan

Kirishima Sculpture Park, Japan

Nagoya City Art Museum, Japan

Iwaki Municipal Museum, Fukushima,

The Hakone Open-air Museum, Japan

Tokushima Art Museum, Japan

Sapporo Sculpture Park, Hokkaido, Japan

Wakayama Prefectoral Museum, Japan

Caldic Collection, The Hague, Netherlands

Museet for Samtidskunst, Oslo, Norway

Fundac"o Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal

Fundac"o Berardo, Sintra, Portugal

Malmo Konsthall, Sweden

Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

Umedalen Sculpture Foundation, Umea, Sweden

Weltkunst Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland

Marquiles Foundation, Florida, USA

Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, TX, USA

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA

Walker Arts Centre, Minneapolis, USA

Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, USA

Museum of Modern Art, Vienna

Works in Public Places:

OUT OF THE DARK, Martinsplatz, Kassel, Germany, 1987

SOUND II, Winchester Cathedral, U.K., 1989

OPEN SPACE, Place Jean Monnet, Rennes, France, 1993

IRON:MAN, Victoria Square, Birmingham, U.K., 1994

HAVMANN, Mo I Rana, Norway, 1995

BEARING IV, Tongyoung City, Korea, 1997

ANGEL OF THE NORTH, Gateshead, U.K., 1998

RHIZOME II, Expo Parque, Lisbon, 1998

QUANTUM CLOUD, The Thames, Greenwich, London 2000

WELL, Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, The Hague, Holland, 2000

PASSAGE, Caumont, France, 2000

SITE OF REMEMBRANCE, Oslo, Norway, 2000

DOROTHEENBLOCKE HAUS 6, Berlin, Germany, 2000

MIND-BODY COLUMN, Osaka, Japan, 2000

Antony Gormley on the web

www.antonygormley.com - Homepage