PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: sculpture
Italian artist, engineer, and scientist
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal....
Italian artist
Michelangelo was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist...
Spanish artist
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer. He was one of the greatest and most-influential artists of the 20th century and the creator (with Georges...
French artist
Edgar Degas was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker who was prominent in the Impressionist group and widely celebrated for his images of Parisian life. Degas’s principal subject was the human—especially...
British artist
Henry Moore was an English sculptor whose organically shaped, abstract, bronze and stone figures constitute the major 20th-century manifestation of the humanist tradition in sculpture. Much of his work...
Italian artist
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian artist who was perhaps the greatest sculptor of the 17th century and an outstanding architect as well. Bernini created the Baroque style of sculpture and developed it...
French artist
Honoré Daumier was a prolific French caricaturist, painter, and sculptor especially renowned for his cartoons and drawings satirizing 19th-century French politics and society. His paintings, though hardly...
Italian sculptor
Donatello was a master of sculpture in both marble and bronze, one of the greatest of all Italian Renaissance artists. A good deal is known about Donatello’s life and career, but little is known about...
French sculptor
Auguste Rodin was a French sculptor of sumptuous bronze and marble figures, considered by some critics to be the greatest portraitist in the history of sculpture. His The Gates of Hell, commissioned in...
Italian sculptor
Lorenzo Ghiberti was an early Italian Renaissance sculptor, whose doors (Gates of Paradise; 1425–52) for the Baptistery of the cathedral of Florence are considered one of the greatest masterpieces of Italian...
Romanian-French sculptor
Constantin Brancusi was a pioneer of modern abstract sculpture whose works in bronze and marble are characterized by a restrained, elegant use of pure form and exquisite finishing. A passionate wood-carver,...
American artist
Alexander Calder was an American artist best known for his innovation of the mobile suspended sheet metal and wire assemblies that are activated in space by air currents. Visually fascinating and emotionally...
Italian painter and sculptor
Andrea del Verrocchio was a 15th-century Florentine sculptor and painter and the teacher of Leonardo da Vinci. His equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, erected in Venice in 1496, is particularly important....
Chinese activist and artist
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist and activist who produced a multifaceted array of creative work, including sculptural installations, architectural projects, photographs, and videos. While Ai’s art was lauded...
Ghanaian sculptor
El Anatsui is a Ghanaian sculptor who is best known for his large-scale metal tapestries constructed from bottle caps and copper wire. These pieces are a culmination of a career spent experimenting with...
Pakistani-American artist
Shahzia Sikander is a Pakistani-American artist known for reviving the practice of traditional Indian miniature painting, or the art of illustrating manuscripts. In addition to painting, her work spans...
American artist
Simone Leigh is an American artist perhaps best known for her ceramic sculptures, though she also creates works involving video, installation, and social practice. Leigh often says that Black women are...
American sculptor and filmmaker
Joseph Cornell was an American self-taught artist and filmmaker and one of the originators of the form of sculpture called assemblage, in which unlikely objects are joined in an unorthodox unity. He is...
British artist
Chris Ofili is a British painter and sculptor known for his multilayered paintings that marry the sacred with the profane. Ofili gained notoriety early in his career for his controversial use of elephant...
Cuban-born artist
Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-born interdisciplinary artist who drew from feminism, ancient religions, sculpture, earth art, video, and performance to create what she termed “earth-body art.” The majority of...
American mixed-media artist
Mickalene Thomas is an American mixed-media artist best known for portraits of Black women that are often made from nontraditional media, such as rhinestones, glitter, and yarn. She also works in collage,...
Spanish artist
Joan Miró was a Catalan artist who combined abstract art with Surrealist fantasy. His mature style evolved from the tension between his fanciful, poetic impulse and his vision of the harshness of modern...
Dutch sculptor
Claus Sluter was an influential master of early Netherlandish sculpture, who moved beyond the dominant French taste of the time and into highly individual monumental, naturalistic forms. The works of Claus...
French-American artist
Niki de Saint Phalle was a French-American artist whose diverse practice encompassed a wide variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, performance, and film. Her work explores femininity, gender...
Korean artist, critic, philosopher, and poet
Lee Ufan is a Korean artist, critic, philosopher, and poet who was a prominent theorist and proponent of the Tokyo-based movement of young artists from the late 1960s through the early ’70s known as Mono-ha...
Swiss sculptor and painter
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor and painter, best known for his attenuated sculptures of solitary figures. His work has been compared to that of the existentialists in literature. Giacometti displayed...
American architect, sculptor, and painter
Tony Smith was an American architect, sculptor, and painter associated with Minimalism as well as Abstract Expressionism and known for his large geometric sculptures. As a child, Smith was quarantined...
Italian artist
Benvenuto Cellini was a Florentine sculptor, goldsmith, and writer. He was one of the most important Mannerist artists and, because of the lively account of himself and his period in his autobiography,...
Venezuelan artist
Gego was a Venezuelan artist associated with geometric abstraction, a type of art that uses flat shapes to create nonobjective compositions, and kinetic art, a form of art that relies on motion. She is...
English-born Mexican painter and sculptor
Leonora Carrington was an English-born Mexican Surrealist artist and writer known for her haunting, autobiographical, somewhat inscrutable paintings that incorporate images of sorcery, metamorphosis, alchemy,...
American artist
Kehinde Wiley is an American artist best known for portraits that feature African Americans in the traditional settings of Old Master paintings. Wiley’s childhood experiences in the South Central neighborhood...
American painter and sculptor
Audrey Flack was an American painter and sculptor whose choice of subject matter added a sociopolitical dimension to the Photo-realist movement. She was one of the first artists to use a projection of...
Italian artist
Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian conceptual artist known for his subversive displays. Despite causing much controversy with his satiric critique of the art world and of society, Cattelan has deftly managed...
Native American artist
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was a Native American artist whose drawings, paintings, sculptures, and prints build on Modernist vocabularies to explore Native American history, identity, and sociopolitical...
Italian sculptor
Antonio Canova, marchese d’Ischia was an Italian sculptor, one of the greatest exponents of Neoclassicism. Among his works are the tombs of popes Clement XIV (1783–87) and Clement XIII (1787–92) and statues...
Italian sculptor
Nicola Pisano was a sculptor whose work, along with that of his son Giovanni and other artists employed in their workshops, created a new sculptural style for the late 13th and the 14th centuries in Italy....
British sculptor, artist, and photographer
Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, land artist, and photographer known for ephemeral works created outdoors from natural materials found on-site. As an adolescent growing up in Yorkshire, England,...
American sculptor and astronaut
Ed Dwight is a sculptor and the first Black American to undergo astronaut training. In May 2024 he became the oldest person to enter space. Dwight was born to Edward Dwight, Sr., and Georgia Baker Dwight,...
American sculptor and architect
Maya Lin is an American architect and sculptor concerned with environmental themes who is best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The daughter of intellectuals who...
British artist
Yinka Shonibare is a British artist of Nigerian heritage known for his examination of such ideas as authenticity, identity, colonialism, and power relations in often-ironic drawings, paintings, sculptures,...
British sculptor and draftsman
Antony Gormley is a British sculptor and draftsman best known for his work with human forms, which he created chiefly from casts of his own naked body. In these artworks, he examined aspects of the human...
Italian sculptor
Giovanni Pisano was a sculptor, sometimes called the only true Gothic sculptor in Italy. He began his career under the classicist influence of his father, Nicola, and carried on this tradition after his...
American sculptor and educator
Selma Burke was an American sculptor and educator whose most notable work is a portrait of U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, which some have credited with inspiring the depiction of him on the dime. In...
Japanese artist and entrepreneur
Takashi Murakami is a Japanese artist and entrepreneur widely recognized for his ability to adapt the aesthetics of Japanese traditional art to operate within the context of popular culture. Murakami studied...
Italian artist
Amedeo Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor whose portraits and nudes—characterized by asymmetrical compositions, elongated figures, and a simple but monumental use of line—are among the most...
Japanese artist
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who is a self-described “obsessional artist,” known for her extensive use of polka dots and for her infinity installations. She employed painting, sculpture, performance...
American artist
Claes Oldenburg was a Swedish-born American Pop-art sculptor, best known for his giant soft sculptures of everyday objects. Much of Oldenburg’s early life was spent in the United States, Sweden, and Norway,...
American painter, sculptor, and printmaker
Ellsworth Kelly was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker who was a leading exponent of the hard-edge style, in which abstract contours are sharply and precisely defined. Though often associated...
British sculptor
Anish Kapoor is an Indian-born British sculptor known for his use of abstract biomorphic forms and his penchant for rich colours and polished surfaces. He was also the first living artist to be given a...
American artist
Eva Hesse was a German-born American painter and sculptor known for using unusual materials such as rubber tubing, fibreglass, synthetic resins, cord, cloth, and wire. Hesse had a prolific yet short career,...