John Bridgeman

John Bridgeman (1975)

Arthur John "Bridge" Bridgeman (born February 2, 1916 in Felixstowe , Suffolk , † December 29, 2004 ) was an English sculptor .

Life

John Bridgeman studied at the Colchester Academy of Fine Arts at the age of 14 and then studied with Frank Dobson at the Royal Academy of Arts . During this period he created pictures of gouache and pastel colors with English landscapes in a romantic style. After the war he was offered a scholarship to the British School in Rome , but he preferred to work with Misha Black and then to the Dome of Discovery for the Festival of Great Britain . After a position as director of the department of sculpture at the Carlisle Art Academy , he replaced William Bloye as director of the department of sculpture at the Birmingham Art Academy , where he worked until his retirement in 1981.

Works

His work was popular, he found both private and municipal patrons. He helped redesign Birmingham after the war by creating a number of iconic pieces of public art. He also designed play sculptures for children in the new public buildings that were being erected - an idea with which he was ahead of his time in the 1950s. He was always experimenting with new materials, for example he created the composition Mother and Baby from cement for the maternity hospital in Birmingham and the recently restored larger than life bronze group “Pity” for the Dudley Street hospital in Birmingham. These are typical examples of his wide range of design skills. The Mater Dolorosa in the Dame Chapel of the Coventry Cathedral , which was then just rebuilt , is possibly the most important of his religious works. He presents his philosophy of art and his interest in methods and materials in the book Clay Models and Stone Carving , which he wrote in 1974 with his wife, the author and journalist Irene Dancyger. Towards the end of his life, he focused on creating smaller female sculptures, on which he tried himself as one of the last great practitioners in the art of lost wax modeling .

literature

• Dancyger, Irene, Clay Models and Stone Carving, London, 1974 ISBN 0877495645
• Noszlopy, George and Beach, Jeremy, Public Sculpture of Birmingham, Liverpool, 1998, 56, ISBN 0853236925
• Fieldhouse, Ken and Woudstra, Jan, The Regeneration of Public Parks , London, 2000, 162, ISBN 0419259007
• Noszlopy, George, Public Sculpture of Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull, Liverpool, 2003, 171, ISBN 0853238375
• Noszlopy, George and Waterhouse, Fiona, Public Sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country , Liverpool, 2005, 170, ISBN 0853239894

Remarks

1. ↑ http://www.leicestergalleries.com/art-and-antiques/detail/11217
2. ↑ Play Sculpture ( Memento of the original from May 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Mother and Child ( Memento of the original from May 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ Compassion ( Memento of the original from December 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ http://coventrycathedraltour.org.uk/images/features/virgin_mary.jpg

Web links

Commons : John Bridgeman  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Independent January 13, 2005
• Public Monument and Sculpture Association National Recording Project
• Gallery Pangolin
• Coventry Cathedral Appeal: Seeking Sanctuary Refugee Monument
• Henry Moore Institute Archives