With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Heinz Warneke
Sculpture
1895 – 1983
A WPA artist, Warneke became a major figure in the direct carving movement in sculpture, in which the artist retained full control of the work by carving the final piece. His best known works are large-scale animal figures including the Nittany Lion at Pennsylvania State University and the African elephants at the Washington DC zoo.
- Biography/Description of Work
Heinz Warneke was a native of Germany. He began drawing and painting as a small child, apprenticed in a silver factory, and studied at the local art school in the evenings. He successfully passed a competitive examination to enter the Berlin Arts and Crafts School to study sculpture. During World War I Warneke served in the military as a non-combatant, managing a cemetery and prisoners of war in Bucharest. After the war, he decided to leave Germany for the United States, and moved to Saint Louis where family friends helped him and he found work modeling architectural ornament for buildings. He began to exhibit small sculptures and his animal figures began to be noticed by critics. His early work showed experiments with abstraction, but his maturing style was representational, though modernist in the way forms emerge from the material and are expressively simplified. Upon his marriage, the couple lived in Paris from 1927-32, and found it stimulating to be at the center of the modern art world. Once back in the States, Warnecke fulfilled WPA commissions. In 1931 Warneke purchased a run-down farm in East Haddam, which they named ‘The Mowings.’ With restoration, an addition, and a studio in a converted barn, the farm became alternately their primary or seasonal home for the rest of their lives. Along with his contemporary William Zorach, Warneke became a proponent of the direct carving method of sculpting in which the artist worked the final piece rather than making a plaster or clay model and hiring a craftsman to carve the final stone or wood piece.
- Sources view
- East Haddam Historical Society. [ http://www.easthaddamhistory.org/about-us.html ]
Cunningham, Mary Mullen. Heinz Warneke (1895-1983): a Sculptor First and Last. University of Delaware Press, 1994. - Associated Resource(s)