THE ARTIST

Michael Sandle studied at Douglas School of Art and Technology, Isle of Man from 1951 to 1954 and the Slade School of Fine Art, London from 1956 to 1959.

In his early work he emphasised craftsmanship and the search for symbols, rejecting the formalism increasingly common in sculpture of the period. Throughout the 1960s and ’70s he worked on a small range of individual works in which he explored abstract and figurative idioms.

Following his appointment as professor of sculpture at Pforzheim, Germany in 1973, and at Karlsruhe, Germany in 1980, Sandle’s work became more monumental, partly in response to a series of significant commemorative commissions. His work voices criticisms of what Sandle describes as “the heroic decadence” of capitalism, in particular its appetite for global conflict.

He has also attacked the media for packaging and sanitising the destructiveness of war. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1994.

He has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions in Britain and internationally including the 5th Paris Biennale, 4th and 6th Documenta and Sao Paulo Biennale. This one from Anima Mundi Gallery in Cornwall. Michael Sandle was born in Weymouth, Dorset in 1936. He studied painting and printmaking at Slade School of Fine Art.

In 1960 he worked as a lithographer at the printmaking Atelier Patris in Paris. He has lectured at Leicester College of Art, Nottingham College of Art, Coventry College of Art, Foley College of Art, and Slade School of Art. He has been an associate Fine Art professor at the University of Calgary and the University of Victoria (British Columbia). In 1973 he was a lecturer in sculpture at the Fachhochschule für Gestaltung in Pforzheim ,Germany and became professor there in 1977. He became a sculpture professor at Akademie für Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe in 1980.

In 1982 he was elected as an associate member of the Royal Academy and later elected as a Royal Academician in 1990. From 1995 -1998 he was appointed the Senior Research Fellow at the De Montfort University. He has been awarded DAAD grant under the ‘Artists in Berlin’ programme in 1974, the Nobutaka Shikanai Prize at the 1st Rodin Grand Prize Exhibition in Japan, in 1986 the major prize in the 7th International Small Sculpture in Budapest in 1987 and a major award (Korn Ferry) at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1989, the Kenneth Armitage Fellowship 2004-6 and the Hugh Casson Drawing Prize, Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in 2007.

He has had solo exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Diploma Gallery in the Royal Academy of Arts, the Imperial War Museum, the Tate in Liverpool and the Duveen Gallery in the Tate Britain. He has also exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, the Serpentine Gallery and the Arnolfini Gallery as well as numerous public and private art galleries worldwide.