mihail. sculpture

8/9/2019 Mihail. SCULPTURE

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Mihail

SCULPTUREBRONZE

ANDOTHER

UNTITLED WITH

2010masonry over stee



The artist with the original plaster of

COMPANIONS, 1987pix. Olof NY



THE QUEEN AND THE MIRROR, bronze, 1989.

In the background YOUNG WOMAN EXPOSED TO WIND, bronze 1989



Mihail was born in 1929 in Bulgaria. His father was a Protestant minister.

Mihail’s artist uncle had his studio in the attic of their house. Young Mihail admired his uncle’s

life stile, his beautiful models, the smell of paint, He attended the American Grade School, ateice cream, played with his friends and believed that the world was a very fine place. But when in1940 his young Jewish school mates were forced to wear the yellow star and the German armyflooded the streets and the Allies started bombing Sofia heavily, and one Sunday morning theGestapo arrested his father for helping Jews flee the country, his happy and carefree childhoodended abruptly.

A few years later, in 1944, the Russians rolled into the country.It was not easy for the son of an“enemy of the people” which his father had been labeled with to attend University. However,Mihail enrolled to study philosophy at the University of Saints Clement and Methodius in Sofia.Two years later he was accepted at Sofia’s Academy of Fine Arts from where he graduated inmonumental sculpture in 1954.

Communist ideology was imposed along with Socialist Realism a strict and dictatorial art style.What that particular style meant exactly is still shrouded in confusion, but it was a tool for masspropaganda in the service of the absurd. There was to be only one Truth, the Soviet one.Impressionism or any other western art movements were classified as “fraud”. The Academy of Art was guarded by trusted armed volunteers during the night. And for Mihail there was a way tocircumvent the imposed official and political censorship of art - the national historicalperspective and images. During the eleven years (1954-1965) leading to his departure fromBulgaria, he created public works of art that survived the tempest of the times, the viciousnessof the communism system and the anarchy that followed.

TUNISIAThe artist arrived in Tunis in 1965 and embarked on his new life of freedom, enchanted by theexuberance of Tunisia’s Mediterranean colors, so different from the ones he was accustomedto. Paul Klee on a trip to Tunis in 1914 was also overwhelmed by the intense light there, whichinspired his awakening to color.

In Tunis, Mihail exhibited with the artist group Ecole de Tunis. One of his sculptures, a portraitstatue of Ibn Khaldun, the 14th century Arab poet and philosopher, attracted PresidentBourguiba’s attention. Bourguiba asked Mihail to sculpt his portraits and commissioned thesculpture for the 150 meter long Carrara marble wall for the National Monument, The Martyrs of Bizerte. Mihail carved the marble in Quercheta, Italy, where he met Henry Moore, MarinoMarrini and Isamu Noguchi who were working in the same quarry courtyard, and Jacques

Lipshitz at the nearby village of Pietra Santa.

Influenced by the culture of ancient Carthage, in 1967, the artist developed a group of abstractsymbols he called Sunday Morning . They became the basis of an extended series that includedprints, wood and bronze sculptures and other mixed media works. In 1971 the artist emigratedto the USA and settled in New York, NY.



CAST THE SLEEPING ELEPHANT (1976-2009)

bronze

United Nations Headquarters New York

The cast in Africa



NEW YORK

Mihail longed for change. Life in Tunisia became like drifting in the past. In his mind bronze andstone had become hopelessly permanent materials. Also the Bulgarian authorities had refused tofurther extend his passport. So, he took a deep breath and in 1971 went to New York and settledthere with his wife Lilda and their daughter Iana as refugees and stateless people. They lived in araw loft space in Manhattan, E 17th street. and for the next 20 years this was his most meaningful

studio. For a long time he was not able to see his daughter from a previous marriage, Elizabeth,who was still living in Bulgaria

Mihail resumed work on the Sunday Morning series. Nothing was to be permanent, all should beburned, smashed, disposed of. He built floating paper roadblocks and wall configurations(Columbia University 1973), painted on flattened umbrellas and exhibited with the Poindexter Gallery in New York.



!

In 1974, Mihail became interested in casting from nature, not modeling but emotionally documenting whatwas already there. After casting sand in the Sahara desert of southern Tunisia, grass in Alsace-Lorraine- France,the Equator- Kenya, Street details in New York City,

And in 1976 the artist embarked on a project to cast a wild bull elephant in Africa.

In 1980 Mihail traveled to Africa where he cast a live, wild, bull elephant. The elephant was not harmed.Mihail incorporated the cast of the elephant in creating this work of art given to the United Nations as agift by Kenya, Namibia and Nepal and inaugurated by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on October 18,1998.

After the casting of the wild bull elephant in Africa, Mihail began work on the sculpture in an oldboathouse in Lloyd Harbor, Long Island (1980-1986). His renewed interest in figuration resulted in thecreation of a battery of sculptures. Among them: the Companions; the Messenger; large scale SundayMorning bronzes: the Mirror, the Stella, the King, the Queen along with several life size nudes. All of them, cast in bronze, were exhibited in 1989-1990, in New York.

Mihail with his mother and Lildain 1979

The artist with his mother and LildaBotanical Garden, NYC, 1979



THE WARTHOGS, 1988, bronze

Hubert Graf and art dealer Thierry Morin, 2009



4 Wire sculpturesfrom Wire and Charcoal Series, 2009-10



THE MESSENGER, 1984 RECLINED, 1989bronze bronze

the artistʼs Millbrook studio 1989-1993



THE MINOTAURworks from the Minotaur Series 1979-2010



LITTLE BUDHA, 2010

gilded epoxy



YOUNG MAN WITH LEOPARD IN MIND,

1992



THE GOLDEN WARTHOG, 2009

gilded epoxy over steel net



FAUVE WITH BIRDS, 2010

Rhode Island studio

mihail. sculpture

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