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Antony Gormley Signed Prints & Originals

Biography for Antony Gormley

Born 1950

Antony Gormley is both an excellent sculptor and draughtsman.

Antony Gormley studied archaeology, anthropology and art history at Trinity College, Cambridge (1968-71) and Buddhist meditation in India and Sri Lanka (1971-4), experiences that profoundly inform his work. Influenced by the ideals of Indian sculpture as much as by those of modernism, Antony Gormley’s sculptures use the human form to explore man’s existence in and relation to the world. Also explored in his etchings and lithographs; Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Sublimate’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Space’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bodies in Space (white). Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bodies in Space (black). Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Energy’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Untitled 2001’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Domain’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Feeling Material’.

Antony Gormley is primarily known for the lead figures cast from his own body. Antony Gormley’s belief that the spiritual and physical selves are inseparable is reflected in works such as; ‘Land, Sea and Air’ (1982). Three figures, crouching, kneeling and standing, were placed on the seashore, embodying the process of Buddhist spiritual awareness. The work also referred to the earthly condition of the body and man’s relationship with his surroundings. These concerns are further reflected in Antony Gormley’s full use of installation space, with sculptures suspended from ceiling and walls. Many works were made specifically for natural environments, most controversially Angel of the North (h. 20 m, wingspan 54 m; 1998), which towers over the M1 motorway in Gateshead, England.

Antony Gormley mounted his first one-man exhibition in 1981, at the Serpentine gallery and had further exhibitions there. In 2001 The Serpentine gallery Published lithograph; Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Sexual Field Asexual Field’.

Antony Gormley’s draughtsman skills are evident in his early woodcuts of 1990; Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bearing Light I’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bearing Light II’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bearing Light III’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bearing Light IV’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bearing Light V’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bearing Light VI’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bearing Light VII’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bearing Light VIII’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bearing Light IX’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bearing Light X’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bearing Light XI’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Bearing Light XII’. And Antony Gormley’s black and white set of 1990 etchings; Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Body and Soul 01’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Body and Soul 02’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Body and Soul 03’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Body and Soul 04’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Body and Soul 05’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Body and Soul 06’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Body and Soul 07’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Body and Soul 08’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Body and Soul 09’.

In 1994, Antony Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize for ‘Field’, a series of installations made in collaboration with different communities. Thousands of hand-sized clay figures were produced for each version, the shape of each determined by the person making it. Placed in a gallery that could be viewed only from the threshold, their gazes confronted the viewer so that the observer became the subject. “Sculpture is an act of faith in life, in its continuity”, comments Antony Gormley. “We all do things like this; we have a stone that we keep in our pocket which is a guarantee of life’s continuity, and it has to do with hoping that things will work out, that life will be okay.” The first version of ‘Field’ was made in 1990 with the Texca family of brick-makers in San Matias, Cholula, Mexico. Thirty-five thousand figures were made by about sixty men, women and children aged from six to over sixty, mostly members of the extended family. Participants were asked to follow only a few instructions: the pieces were to be hand-sized and easy to hold, eyes were to be deep and closed and the head was to be in proportion with the body. Figures range in size from 8-26 centimetres tall, and were dried in the sun and then baked in a brick kiln. The twenty-five tonnes of clay used in making the figures came from the valley floor a few miles to the southwest of San Matias.

Antony Gormley’s ‘Field ‘acts as an ‘invasion’ or ‘infection’, and the sensation is that of a tide; an endless mass that has become temporarily limited by the architecture of the place where it is installed, but could easily extend further than we can see. When we look at the figures in Field, they return our gaze, which has the effect of making us, and not them, the subject of the work.

Antony Gormley has over the past 25 years revitalised the human form in sculpture through a radical investigation of the body as a place of memory and transformation. “I am interested in the body”, Antony Gormley says, “Because it is the place where emotions are most directly registered. When you feel frightened, when you feel excited, happy, depressed somehow the body registers it.” Also seen in his original works on paper; Antony Gormley, mixed media on paper ‘Loom’. And Antony Gormley, mixed media on paper ‘Figure’.

The final ‘Field’ of Antony Gormley’s famous human figures are having there last stand – high in the Austrian Alps. Antony Gormley has created 100 life-size cast-iron statues which are installed across Europe’s most imposing mountain range in an operation so complex that it required the involvement of the Austrian army, 15 mountain rescue teams, dozens of helicopter flights and five years of planning. ‘Horizon Field’ spans 150 sq km across the idyllic glacier-topped peaks and rolling green hills of Vorarlberg, Austria’s westernmost province. It involves the figures standing in a horizontal line 2,039m above sea level at intervals ranging from 60 metres to several kilometres, depending on the topography. The statues have 17 standing poses, each slightly different from the other. Some have been installed in sites accessible to hikers, or skiers in the winter. Others are unapproachable, placed on particularly remote and steep ridges, though visible from certain vantage points. One of them is on an almost vertical cliff-face.

Antony Gormley wanted the statues to look in all directions without ever facing each other. “It’s important to me that it’s the viewer who has a direct relationship with the sculpture,” he said. “It’s important there’s no drama. I’m not putting them into a tableau. It’s called Horizon Field. They’re all facing a horizon, or making a horizon themselves.”

The ‘Horizon Field’ installation, followed Antony Gormley’s Edinburgh project, where six of his statues were placed at sites leading to the sea – a variation on his nude figures on London rooftops and bridges, New York skyscrapers and a Merseyside beach, which alarmed passers-by who thought they were real.

Antony Gormley talks of wanting to “liberate” sculpture from the ghetto of galleries, and likens the bareness of his figures to man’s vulnerability.

Antony Gormley quotes: “I am working on the body from inside, using my own as a model. They’re not like statues. They’re almost forensic, evidence of where a body once stood. There is no expression, no virtuosity in the way they’re made. There is a distinction between my work and Rodin’s. A Rodin [sculpture] is made, manipulating skilfully… modelling clay. None of that pertains to my work. I simply stand there, mould it, and the result… is cast in iron. I’m not wanting to call attention to the beauty of my handiwork.”

Antony Gormley sees the figures as “silent witnesses” that change the feeling about where you are: “The works are neither representations nor symbols, but [define] the place where a human being once was, and where any human being could be… [It] asks basic questions – who are we, what are we, where do we come from and to where are we headed?” Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Snowfall’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Floor’.

Antony Gormley’s draughtsman skills are prevalent again in his more recent lithographs 2007; Antony Gormley ‘Field’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Floor’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Brain Filed’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Clearing I’. Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Clearing II’. And print; Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Singularity’.

Since winning the Turner Prize in 1994 and creating his giant ‘Angel of the North’ in Gateshead in 1998, Antony Gormley seems to have become the Pied Piper of contemporary art. When Antony Gormley asked for volunteers to be moulded for the ghostly, steel figures in his Domain Field installation, more than 15,000 people came forward. When Antony Gormley asked members of the public to become a work of art for an hour on an empty plinth in Trafalgar Square, there were 35,000 applicants and the website received at least 7m hits across the world. Collectors have been prepared to pay more than £2m for a single Antony Gormley piece at auction. Antony Gormley has come to embody what we might think of as a “public” artist.

Antony Gormley’s latest exhibition, held in a gallery space includes several cast-iron sculptures with figure-like proportions. One approaches them as though they are human, because of their size and scale, but they are, in fact, constructed of iron blocks and cubes. Tetris men, Meccano men, built from only straight lines. Robot men constructed using architectonic principles – they are more like buildings than people. Each figure has had some element or other emphasised or stretched: a long nose, arms like tables, or a giant, towering head. The Exhibition also includes ‘Breathing Room III’ (2010). The installation incites gasps and excitement – even fear. In the darkness, empty, intersecting frames covered in glowing phosphorescent paint fill the gallery space, and illuminate it as though it were a virtual, computer-generated atmosphere. The gallery appears like a glowing grid. The print published to accompany the show is; Antony Gormley, print, signed ‘Breathing Room’.

Antony Gormley was born in 1950 in London, where he continues to live and work.

* Approximate price based on current exchange rates.

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