Wood Carving Artists

Tapio Wirkkala (1915 – 1985) discovered the rhythm of hollowed-out plywood. The Finnish artist made a 9-meter wall from it, the ‘Ultima Thule’. But he also gave the impetus for what became world-famous Finnish design with commercial utility objects like wooden bowls and dishes for […]

Carl Andre (1935 – 2024) became a master minimalist by stacking unworked wooden beams on top of each other. Or arranging beams like a landscape on the floor. Andre thus created a radically new way of looking at sculptural art. He became one of the

The Italian sculptor Giacomo Manzù made more than 50 cardinals in his lifetime, almost all cast in bronze. But one special version he carved in wood, in 1945. Our writer-sculptor Jan Wolkers received lessons from Manzù. And made love in the cinema with his later

A good likeness portrait, carved in wood. That is what German wood artist Karen Löwenstrom (1978) has specialized in. It is a special genre that Löwenstrom practices: the (group) portrait in wood. On commission. Her sculptures are figures of about 25 centimeters high, carved in

Fresh and therefore still wet wood forced Henry Moore (1898 – 1986), the most famous British sculptor of the last century, into a new abstract visual language. To ensure that the wood would dry evenly and without cracks, Moore made sure that his very first

Georg Baselitz no longer causes a scandal. Not even with a gigantic wooden sculpture of his little sister and her friends who were in the Hitler Youth. Arm in arm they are depicted, in their ‘BDM-Gruppe’. Raw and gigantic. The saw cuts of the chainsaw

Zadkine carved 131 sculptures in wood, including a gilded and majestic deer: ‘Le Cerf’. Not everyone knows that for sure. Say Zadkine and most people think of the war monument ‘The Destroyed City’ in Rotterdam. Ossip Zadkine (1888-1967) assembled Le Cerf in 1923 from different

When Karel Appel was still making wooden sculptures, like this ‘Windmill’, nobody would give a cent for the work of the young artist. It was shortly after World War II. Karel Appel (1921-2006) had completed his education at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam under the German

After first being banished to the waste container, wood is completely back in interior design. This is noticed by artist Christine Langerhorst (1937), who already ran galleries with wooden art objects in Utrecht in the 1960s. Langerhorst makes magnificent books of wood. She was born