José de Creeft 1884–1982
Best known for his monumental Alice in Wonderland sculpture group (1959) in Central Park, José de Creeft grew up in Barcelona and started working at a young age to support his impoverished family. At age 6, de Creeft would work at the construction site of La Sagrada Familia moving stones and sand. At age 11, he began carving small religious statuettes in clay and selling them to the tourists during the Fira de Santa Llúcia in his hometown. In his early teen years, de Creeft took up apprenticeship learning woodcarving, and subsequently at the Artistic Foundry of Masriera & Campins. When he turned 16, de Creeft moved to Madrid to study stone carving under Don Augustin Querol Subirats. Upon honing his drawing and sculpting skills with several teachers, in 1901, he was hired as a draftsman for the Madrid Administration of Bridges and Roads. The next year he opened his own studio. It is said that he was exposed to Inuit art during this time which had a lasting effect on his work.
De Creeft moved to Paris at age 21. Following the suggestion from Auguste Rodin, he enrolled at the Académie Julian where he remained a student for two years. In 1906, he went on to win the Grand Prix in the sculpture contest at the academy for his work Torso. Between 1909 and 1928, he would exhibit works at several Parisian salons including the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français.
Between 1911 and 1914, de Creeft worked at La Maison Greber where he learned traditional sculpting techniques using pointing machines. However, the next year, he stopped using pointing machines and focused on making sculptures using the “taille directe” (direct carving) method, which he deemed as pure art. He was deeply influenced by the Modernist and Cubist movement around him. By the mid-1920s, “Chased Lead” sculptures—a technique involving a roughly cast lead block that is hammered, incised and carved by hand—and assemblage works became part of de Creeft’s oeuvre.
De Creeft married his student Alice Robertson Carr in 1929 and together they moved to New York. De Creeft held his first two solo exhibitions in the US not long after the move: one at the Art Institute of Seattle and the other at the Ferargil Galleries in New York. Continuing his experimental practice, de Creeft developed a new sculpting technique called “Beaten Lead” the next year. De Creeft diligently worked on his art using various media while teaching; His genius, dedication and innovation did not go unnoticed and he quickly became an influential figure in the American art scene.
De Creeft was the founding member of the American Artists’ Congress (from which he left in 1940 due to their support of the Soviet Union), the Sculptors Guild, and later the Artists Equity Association and the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. He taught classes at The New School for Social Research in New York, Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and The Art Students’ League in New York. Throughout his career, he held thirty-seven solo exhibitions in the US alone, including his first retrospective exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York which later traveled to thirteen museums. Today, his work can be found in both private and institutional collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Brooklyn Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC and Asheville Art Museum in North Carolina.
