The wooden death dolls of Sulawesi are guardians between life and the afterlife. The figures stand in rows before excavated caves. As a living culture of the Toraja people they have become a tourist attraction. The wooden death dolls of Sulawesi stand as guardians in […]
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Joseph Beuys planted 7000 oaks, one for each basalt block he had stacked high in the city of Kassel. The action of this German artist reflected the growing environmental awareness around 1980. The artwork radically expanded the boundaries of sculpture, performance, and social engagement. Joseph
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Hans Panschar embodies Sehnsucht in works such as placing a mountain on a small sled. His art is about unfulfillable longing for the unreachable, the impossible. This German wood artist is not internationally famous, but he has a highly recognizable style and thematic approach. Hans
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The oldest known depiction of a wood carver is Greek. It shows a naked man seated, holding a bust between his knees. The scene is placed on the inside of a drinking cup and dates to around 520–500 BCE. The cup is now in the
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New icons made on Mount Athos, a secluded monastic state in northern Greece. Especially notable are icons painted on weathered wood, combined with wood carving that reaches back to centuries of Orthodox tradition. New icons made on Mount Athos, like this Maria with nice ornamental
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Gauguin missed the bisj poles. In search of authentic woodcarving in Polynesia, he would have been better off traveling to Papua New Guinea than to Tahiti. In this former Dutch colony, the culture of carving bisj poles was still thriving around 1890. Gauguin missed the
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Queen Tiy: Oldest Wooden Bust in Egypt. Carved around 1353 BCE from yew wood, this bust is nearly 3,400 years old. Exceptionally small yet impressive, it is considered the oldest known wooden bust from the Egyptian civilization. It serves as a rare milestone in the history of wood sculpture.
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The Royal Standard of Ur is one of the most evocative objects to survive from the dawn of urban civilization. Created around 2600–2400 BCE, during the Early Dynastic period of Sumer, it offers a rare, intimate view of how one of the world’s first complex societies imagined
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The eyes of Eveline van Duyl look at you from within a forest. Or is it Eveline herself who sees a roe deer or a wolf? Who is watching whom? When we are in nature, are we looking outward—or inward instead? In her series Forest, this
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Top 10 African Wood Carving Traditions is not a list of individual masterpieces. It is more of an overview of the ten most important African wood carving traditions, each represented by typical sculptures or masks, to showcase the diversity and ritual significance of these cultures.
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