Wood Carving Artists

A man sits on the stump of a tree trunk and plays a singing saw. As if mourning the sawn-down forest. The small painting is a typical Teun Hocks (1947 – 2022). On almost all his works he has depicted himself, as a man lost […]

The artist Femmy Otten (1981) succeeds in conquering the museum with her wood-carved artworks. With her impressive solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, she lifts wood sculpting out of the realm of craftsmanship by exploring major themes such as sexuality, womanhood, motherhood and vulnerability.

Her wooden rug invites jokes. Like: ‘This carpet no longer needs to be beaten’. In the art world, however, the work of Selva Aparicio is taken very seriously. This rug carved out of an oak floor, for example, is about ‘memories from my childhood’. Selva

The first monk in the world had woodworm problems. What to do? A reflection on this masterpiece by German sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider. The faces of wooden sculptures from the 15th and 16th centuries look very dated today. Those high shaved foreheads of the women. All

The miniatures carved from wood by Adam Dircksz date from the 16th century and are so small that you need a magnifying glass to study them properly. About 135 to 150 of these carved miniatures of boxwood have been preserved. They are owned by various

Janson’s Art Bible Ignores Wooden Sculptures. The authoritative Janson’s piles one error upon another blunder when it comes to artworks made of wood. There are plenty of such sculptures. The P+ Special ‘A Correction to Art History’ (2022) showed in 20 pages concealed wooden works

Wood is popular in sustainable circles. As CO2 storage in housing construction. As CO2 capture in the form of climate forests. And as cooling trees in overheated cities. Throughout the centuries, artists have also made the most beautiful sculptures from wood, reflecting the thinking of

Gauguin went to Tahiti in search of the noble savage. He eventually carved the wooden sculptures that the French colonizer had destroyed. Towards the end of his life he could finally make a good living from it. For wood carving enthusiasts, the absence of works

Picasso: Cubist Bathers. Or: The Bathers. That is the name of the wooden sculpture group that Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973) made in 1956 from salvaged wood. Picasso once told why he preferred wood to marble: “I find it strange that we ever got the

Brancusi: The Endless Column. In Romania stands this recognized ‘world monument’ of iron and bronze, no less than 30 meters high. It seems to almost disappear into the clouds. But the Romanian artist Constantin Brancusi (1876 – 1957) carved the original idea much earlier, in