Helaine Blumenfeld

Helaine Blumenfeld (born 1942) is an American sculptor particularly known for her large-scale public sculptures. She creates works primarily in marble and bronze but also in granite and other materials. Examples of her work are in the collections of Clare College, Cambridge, the Courtauld Gallery and the Smithsonian. Amongst her large-scale public works are Family in granite installed in Henry Reuss Federal Plaza in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Tempesta in marble at The Lancasters, London; and Fortuna in bronze at Canary Wharf, London. A fellow and past vice president of the Royal British Society of Sculptors, Blumenfeld was awarded an Honorary OBE in 2011. She lives in the United Kingdom and works there and in Pietrasanta, in Tuscany in central Italy.

Life and career

Blumenfeld was born in New York City in 1942 and grew up in Jamaica Estates in the Borough of Queens. Her father was a builder. Her mother, a daughter of Russian émigrés, was a poet and painter. She received her BA and MA from the University of Michigan and then went on to study for her PhD in political philosophy at Columbia University. After completing her doctoral dissertation, John Locke: A Science of Ethics, in 1964, she studied art in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under the sculptor Ossip Zadkine.. She held her first solo exhibition, a group of polished bronzes, in 1966 at the Palais Pálffy in Vienna.

Blumenfeld had met her husband Yorick in a New York bookshop while she was researching her PhD. They married when she was 20 and had two sons. Their elder son Remy, born in 1965, is a television producer. Their younger son Jared became an environmentalist and served as the EPA Administrator for California and the West under the Obama administration. The Blumenfelds moved permanently to Europe in the late 1960s, eventually settling in the Cambridgeshire village of Grantchester in 1970 where Helaine also has her UK studio.

A turning point in Blumenfeld's career came with her 1974 visit to Pietrasanta in Italy which eventually led her to add marble as one of her primary mediums. She had originally gone there to do bronze casting, but Alicia Penalba, another sculptor working in Pietrasanta, encouraged her to try sculpting in marble and introduced her to master carver Sem Ghelardini. Blumenfeld joined Ghelardini's Studio Sem and began learning stone-carving. At the time, she was the only woman working in the studio's marble yard. In the ensuing years she travelled back and forth from her Grantchester home to Pietrasanta to continue her work with Ghelardini. It was also in Pietrasanta during the 1970s that she met Henry Moore for the first time. He had come to the town to supervise two large-scale sculptures that Ghelardini was carving for him. In 1985 she had a joint exhibition with Moore entitled A British Dialogue: From Perry Green to Cambridge at New York's Alex Rosenberg Gallery. Twelve of her large-scale sculptures in marble and travertine were shown.

By 2013 Blumenfeld's oeuvre had encompassed over 65 commissioned works for public spaces and private collections. The later years of her career have seen several major retrospective exhibitions of her work including those at the Royal British Society of Sculptors (2008), Pietrasanta in the Piazza del Duomo and Chiesa di Sant'Agostino (2011), Salisbury Cathedral (2013), and Bowman Sculpture in London (2015). The London exhibition, entitled Helaine Blumenfeld – Henry Moore A Dialogue 1985–2015, marked the 30th anniversary of her first exhibit with Henry Moore. Hard Beauty, a documentary film on her life and work, was broadcast on Sky Arts in April 2018. The largest solo exhibition to date of the work of Helaine Blumenfeld was presented at Canary Wharf, London, from 16 March to 18 September 2020. Eight of her artwork, including Meridiana, Mysteries, Taking Risks, Illusion, Fortuna, VENUS, ASCENT, and Metamorphosis, are now displayed and free to visit at Canary Wharf Art Trail.

By 2013, Blumenfeld's body of work included more than 65 commissioned sculptures for public spaces and private collections. In subsequent years, several retrospective exhibitions of her work were organized, including presentations at the Royal British Society of Sculptors in 2008, in Pietrasanta at the Piazza del Duomo and Chiesa di Sant'Agostino in 2011, at Salisbury Cathedral in 2013, and at Bowman Sculpture in London in 2015. The London exhibition, Helaine Blumenfeld – Henry Moore: A Dialogue 1985–2015, marked the thirtieth anniversary of her first exhibition alongside Henry Moore. A documentary film about her life and work, Hard Beauty, was broadcast on Sky Arts in April 2018. In 2021, a large-scale exhibition of Blumenfeld's sculptures was presented at Canary Wharf in London between 16 March and 31 May. Several of her works, including Meridiana, Metamorphosis (maquette), Illusion, Fortuna, and Metamorphosis, were subsequently installed as part of the Canary Wharf Art Trail, where they remain publicly accessible.

Exhibitions

1966: Palais Pálffy, Vienna 1968: Chapman Gallery, New York 1969: Galerie Jacques Casanova, Paris 1971: Bonino Gallery, New York 1973: Kettle’s Yard Gallery, Cambridge, UK 1974: Bonino Gallery, New York 1977 : Galerie Attali, Paris In 2019, Blumenfeld exhibited works at Skulptur i Pilane in Sweden. From 2020 to 2023, Blumenfeld's work was featured in Looking Up, an exhibition at Canary Wharf in London . From 2022 to 2023, Blumenfeld had a solo exhibition at Het Depot in Wageningen, the Netherlands. From 2025 to 2026, Gainsborough's House presented Tree of Life, an exhibition of Blumenfeld's sculpture.

Public works and commissions

In 2018, Blumenfeld's sculpture created Tree of Life: Encounter for the Woolf at the Institute in Cambridge. Blumenfeld's sculpture Flame is held by Clare Hall, Cambridge. In 2022, Clare College, Cambridge, installed Blumenfeld's sculpture, Ommage. Several of Blumenfeld's sculptures, including Fortuna, Illusion, and Metamorphosis, are installed in the Canary Wharf public realm.

Film and media

In 2018, Sky Arts broadcast Hard Beauty: The Sculpture of Helaine Blumenfeld, a documentary about her works. The film was also distributed internationally under the title Sculpting Dreams.

Honours

Blumenfeld was elected a fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculptors in 2000 and from 2004 to 2009 served as the society's vice-president. In 2007 she became the first female recipient of the Premio Pietrasanta nel Mondo. She received an honorary OBE in 2011.

Blumenfeld received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Leicester in 2002. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors and served as vice-president of the Royal British Society of Sculptors from 2004 to 2009.