Fiore de Henriquez

Last updated
Fiore de Henriquez
Born
Maria Fiore de Henriquez

20 June 1921
Died5 June 2004
NationalityItalian, British
Known for Sculpture

Fiore de Henriquez (1921-2004) was an Italian-British sculptor.

Contents

Personal life and education

De Henriquez was born in Trieste to a father descended from Spanish noblemen of the Habsburg court in Vienna; her mother was of Turkish and Russian origin. [1] She had one older brother, Diego, who went on to found the War Museum in Trieste. De Henriquez studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia under Arturo Martini.

As a teenager, she was a member of the Fascist Youth Movement, but during the Second World War, she worked with the partisan movement and helped escort Jewish refugees to safety. [2] This was due in part to her father's denunciation in 1935 as an anti-Fascist, for refusing to Italianise his surname.

In 1949, she left Italy for England, and became a British citizen in 1953; she would live there for much of the rest of her life. However, she also returned often to her native Italy. In 1966, she purchased the ruinous hamlet of Peralta in Tuscany, and spent much time on its restoration as an artists' colony.

De Henriquez was born intersex with ambiguous genitalia, and declared herself "proud to be hermaphrodite" and "two people inside one body". [3] She had a brief relationship with German painter Kurt Kramer in the 1940s, but her primary romantic and sexual relationships were with women. De Henriquez affected an offbeat style of dress; in his diaries, Christopher Isherwood described her as appearing "dressed like a male peasant in Cavalleria Rusticana and announc[ing] that she had a love for life." [4]

Career

She held her exhibition debut in Florence in 1947. Following her move to Britain, she exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1950. In 1951, she produced work to commemorate the Festival of Britain, for which she earned the then enormous fee of £4,000. From the late 1950s until 1975, she spent a few months each year touring North America, working and lecturing. [5] She had two further solo shows in Rome in 1975 and 1983.

De Henriquez created portrait sculptures of a wide range of individuals, including Igor Stravinsky, Margot Fonteyn, Augustus John, Peter Ustinov, John F. Kennedy, Vivien Leigh, the Queen Mother, Oprah Winfrey and Laurence Olivier. Towards the end of the 1970s, she began to travel in East Asia, and carried out commissions for clients in Japan and Hong Kong. She was a prolific artist, and known to have created some 4000 portraits between 1948 and her death in 2004. She also worked in other areas of sculpture, such as the monumental fountain of dolphins which was erected in a courtyard at the World Intellectual Property Organization headquarters in Geneva. [6]

De Henriquez's gender identity informed much of her work, with its recurring motifs of paired heads, conjoined figures, and ambiguous mythological creatures. Much of her early work was in the primitive mode. From the early 1960s, her friendship with cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz encouraged her to experiment with looser forms.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Caro</span> English sculptor

Sir Anthony Alfred Caro was an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using 'found' industrial objects. He began as a member of the modernist school, having worked with Henry Moore early in his career. He was lauded as the greatest British sculptor of his generation.

The year 2004 in art involved some significant events and new art works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Ayrton</span> English artist and writer (1921–1975)

Michael Ayrton was a British painter, printmaker, sculptor, critic, broadcaster and novelist. His sculptures, illustrations, poems and stories often focused on the subjects of flight, myths, mirrors and mazes.

Events from the year 1933 in art.

Events from the year 1921 in art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arturo Martini</span> Italian sculptor, painter and engraver (1889–1947)

Arturo Martini (1889–1947) was a leading Italian sculptor between World War I and II. He moved between a very vigorous classicism and modernism. He was associated with public sculpture in fascist Italy, but later renounced his medium altogether.

Fiore means flower in Italian. It may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale</span> British artist

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale was a British artist known for her paintings, book illustrations, and a number of works in stained glass.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sally Bowles</span> Fictional character created by Christopher Isherwood

Sally Bowles is a fictional character created by English-American novelist Christopher Isherwood and based upon 19-year-old cabaret singer Jean Ross. The character debuted in Isherwood's 1937 novella Sally Bowles published by Hogarth Press, and commentators have described the novella as "one of Isherwood's most accomplished pieces of writing." The work was republished in the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin and in the 1945 anthology The Berlin Stories.

Corinne Day was a British fashion photographer, documentary photographer, and fashion model.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heather Jansch</span> British sculptor (1948–2021)

Heather Jansch was a British sculptor notable for making life-sized sculptures of horses from driftwood. Jansch reported that she struggled in her youth academically, but had a passion for drawing and writing. She attended Walthamstow Technical College for her Foundation year and from there gained a place at Goldsmith's. This proved a great disappointment, as figurative art was greatly derided there at the time. She left after the first year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Ross</span> British writer, political activist, and film critic (1911–1973)

Jean Iris Ross Cockburn was a British journalist, political activist, and film critic. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), she was a war correspondent for the Daily Express and is alleged to have been a press agent for Joseph Stalin's Comintern. A skilled writer, Ross worked as a film critic for the Daily Worker. Throughout her life, she wrote political criticism, anti-fascist polemics, and socialist manifestos for a number of disparate organisations such as the British Workers' Film and Photo League. She was a devout Stalinist and a lifelong member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maria Pasquinelli</span> Italian teacher, fascist, convicted murderer, centenarian

Maria Pasquinelli was an Italian teacher and member of the Fascist party convicted for the killing of British Brigadier Robert de Winton in Pola on 10 February 1947.

Michael Gaspard Rizzello was a sculptor, medallist, and designer.

Veronica Maudlyn Ryan is a Montserrat-born British sculptor. She moved to London with her parents when she was an infant and now lives between New York and Bristol. In December 2022, Ryan won the Turner Prize for her 'really poetic' work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ghisha Koenig</span> British sculptor

Ghisha Koenig was a British sculptor whose work focused on the work place, especially factories as a hub of human activity.

Karin Margareta Jonzen, née Löwenadler, was a British figure sculptor whose works, in bronze, terracotta and stone, were commissioned by a number of public bodies in Britain and abroad.

Barbara Tribe (1913–2000) was an Australian-born artist who spent most of her career in Cornwall. She is regarded as a significant twentieth-century portrait artist, working both in painting and sculpture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tristano Alberti</span> Italian sculptor

Tristano Alberti was an Italian sculptor. Inspired by Auguste René Rodin, after attending ornate sculptors class at the Alessandro Volta technical institute in Trieste, he choose the same craftsman-like approach in Early Modern Sculpture: Rodin, Degas, Matisse, Brancusi, Picasso, Gonzalez and later, in late 1940s and early 1950s, developed a fully personal style in figuratively representing human and animal-themed chalks and bronzes, possessing a unique ability to model passion, rage and strong emotions. He is known for his sacred art and monuments, and such sculptures as San Sebastiano, Cat, Nazario Sauro and San Giusto. The latter being yearly and awarded as a copy and special prize to prominent people in Trieste.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruggero Rovan</span> Sculptor and artist

Ruggero Rovan was an Italian sculptor. Rovan created "naturalistic and often very emotional sculptures," and is considered one of the greatest 20th-century sculptors and artists from Trieste.

References

  1. "Obituary: Fiore de Henriquez". The Telegraph. 11 June 2004. Retrieved 27 July 2013.
  2. Marsh, Jan (17 June 2004). "Obituary: Fiore de Henriquez". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 July 2013.
  3. Marsh, Jan (17 June 2004). "Obituary: Fiore de Henriquez". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 July 2013.
  4. Isherwood, Christopher (2012). The Sixties: Diaries, Volume Two. 1960-1969. Random House. p. 67. ISBN   9781446419304.
  5. Wolseley Fine Arts (2004). FIORE DE HENRIQUEZ (1921-2004) Sculptor A Memorial Exhibition Catalogue (PDF).
  6. Marks, Edward B. (1995). A world of art: the United Nations collection. p. 79.

Further reading