Helaine Blumenfeld: Tree of Life

Thomas Gainsborough and Helaine Blumenfeld, though separated by time, meet in their poetic sensibility, rhythmic fluidity of form, in dream-like imagery and the universal language of beauty.

When the art historian Michael Rosenthal described Gainsborough as “one of the most technically proficient and, at the same time, most experimental artists of his time“, he could have also been describing Blumenfeld today. A master marble carver, testing the limits of her material, Blumenfeld creates impossibly thin, undulating structures through a profound understanding of the boundaries of her materials. Like Gainsborough and his lightbox, Blumenfeld’s luminous works celebrate the light within. In bronze, she works with her foundry in Italy on innovations including experimental patinas using silver nitrate.

Her sculptures often resemble organic, figurative or botanical forms that hover in that tantalising zone between abstraction and figuration. For Gainsborough’s House, there will be three sculptures in the historic garden and one overlooking from inside.

Helaine Blumenfeld, OBE, is one of the most esteemed sculptors working in the UK today. Born in 1942 in New York, she studied philosophy at Columbia University before moving to Paris to train in sculpture at the Ecole de la Grande Chaumière, with Ossip Zadkine. Blumenfeld carves in marble and wood and casts in bronze.