View source for Alexander Sokolov (sculptor)

{{Short description|Sculptor (1955–2022)}}
{{RefImprove|date=August 2023}}

'''Alexander Sokolov''' (1955–2022) was a [[Direct carving|direct-carving]] or ''taille directe'' [[marble]] [[sculpture|sculptor]]. He spent time working and exhibiting in Ireland, France and Spain, which has led to the distribution of his more central continental style within [[Iberian Peninsula|Iberia]]. The book ''Sokolov'' by the renowned [[Basque people|Basque]] poet and critic [[Mario Ángel Marrodán|Marrodán]] is to be found at the libraries of the many Spanish universities and Royal Academies of Fine Art.

The sculptor studied and lived in the studios of [[Miklos Dallos]] at his outset in Paris in the mid-1970s. Sokolov was seen by Marrodán as emanating from the French school of sculpture and there is a chain of teaching influence through Miklos Dallos and [[Marcel Gimond]] back to [[Antoine Bourdelle]] and [[Aristide Maillol]]. Sokolov, who in French manner elicits response within the bare subject of the [[torso]] and the [[nude]], as does Dallos, also has, like Gimond, a strength for [[portrait]]ure.

That specification of sculpture as tension of force between the under-lying helicoidal axis and superposed rhythm of [[Plane (mathematics)|plane]]s in Sokolov is tempered by the artist's choice to work, free from preparatory modelling, in direct-carving. The modernism of the French school of sculpture developed in modelling but Sokolov's direct-carving is informed by the revolutionary carving influences of [[Brâncuși]] and the later [[Henry Moore]]. As a [[portraitist]], Sokolov is unusual as working by ''taille directe'', but the helicoidal axis teaching shapes the majority of his large body of work in the human figure and nude. Such movement about the axis would be a continuation of the Italian art termed [[Mannerism|Mannerist]].

Sokolov, who has worked between studios in Ireland and Olula del Rio in Spain, has exhibited seventeen one man shows in European cities.

==References==
*[http://diana.uca.es/search*spi/X?SEARCH=Marrodan+Sokolov&l=&m=&b=&searchscope=3&Da=&Db=&SORT=D Mario Ángel Marrodán, ''Sokolov: esculturas'', La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca, 1993]

==External links==
* [http://sokolovsculpture.googlepages.com Archive]
* [http://sokolovsculpture.googlepages.com/alexandersokolovbiography Biography]
* [http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/a/34042.html Live]

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[[Category:1955 births]]
[[Category:2022 deaths]]
[[Category:Spanish sculptors]]
[[Category:Spanish male sculptors]]


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