I became a sculptor because I wanted to develop my own language, a language free from the conventions and clichés inherent in extant modes of expression, a language in which to convey the particular nature of my experience and vision. Sculpture, for me, is the only medium capable of giving form to the mysteries of the human soul - it is multi-dimensional, a process, an embodiment of transformation, communicative, sensual and spiritual. Movement has always been integral to my work, but the movement is an internal one, reflecting the emotional change in a state of being. That has meant creating forms which, even on a monumental scale, seem to be weightless. In this effort I have relied upon the element of light. Light is the ultimate medium for suggesting physical transcendence; it is barely there. Marble carved to the very thinnest point is transformed, quite literally illuminated. This is even more apparent in the medium used to create these two sculptures, Crystal Clear, which suggests air, forms appearing mysteriously.
Born in New York City in 1942, Helaine Blumenfeld was educated at the University of Michigan and Columbia University, New York, where she completed a PhD in Philosophy in 1964. Increasingly aware of the limits of her subject of study and ever more interested in the exploration and expression of ideas in space, she went to study sculpture with Ossip Zadkine in Paris. In 1966, Blumenfeld showed a group of polished bronzes at the Palais Palfy in Vienna. In 1973, by which time she was living in the UK, she exhibited at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. In 1985, the Alex Rosenberg Gallery in New York showed her sculpture in dialogue with Henry Moore, and, in 1992, the Galerie am Lindenplatz in Lichtenstein exhibited her with Alexander Archipenko and Constantin Brancusi. In 2007, she had a major show at Het Depot in Holland, and, in 2008, the Royal British Society of Sculptors held an exhibition in her honour. The works shown in her enthusiastically received 2008-2009 exhibition Letting Go, at the Robert Bowman Gallery in London, were proclaimed by the critic for The Financial Times as “the Henry Moores of the future.”
A member of the Visual Arts Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain between 1981 and 1988, Blumenfeld was elected a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors in 1993 and served the society as Vice-President from 2004 to 2009. In 2007, she was the first woman to be awarded the ‘International Sculpture Prize: Pietrasanta and Versilia in the World’.
Blumenfeld has created over 65 large-scale sculptures in bronze, granite, marble and steel in Europe and the United States for private and public clients, including the British Petroleum headquarters in London, the Lincoln Center in New York and the Cass Sculpture Foundation at Goodwood. Most recently, her two-part marble sculpture, Angels: Harmony, fronted the 2009 London Art Fair. In Cambridgeshire, her sculpture can be viewed on the corner of Brookland’s Avenue and Hills Road (Chauvinist, 1990), at Vision Park, Histon (Shadow Figures, 1991), and at Clare Hall (Flame, 2004) and Newnham College (Esprit, 2004).
Helaine Blumenfeld lives and works in Cambridge and Pietrasanta in Tuscany.