Great Women Sculptors
“a jumping off point for anyone interested in a bird’s-eye view of women sculptors.”
Behold: Phaidon’s third installment in its series of weighty tomes dedicated to celebrating women in art history. Following up on the success of Great Women Artists (2019) and Great Women Painters (2022), Great Women Sculptors promises to highlight “more than three hundred” women from 64 countries over a 500-year timespan in a single volume.
As with most Phaidon publications, the printing quality and design of the layout is top-notch. It’s a delight to see on a shelf and fits well in a stylish stack of art books. Despite the fact that this volume is meant as a primer or easy introduction to women sculptors, the introduction by Lisa Le Feuvre is actually quite art historically astute, proving that you don’t need to dumb down content to make it accessible.
The meat of Great Women Sculptors takes an encyclopedic approach to the topic, arranging the artists alphabetically by last name. Each is afforded a single page, furnished with one representative image and a brief biography and analysis of their greater career and work. Unlike other books that have attempted to serve similar purposes, the text included here is not formulaic or trite—each entry provides the best (or, at least, best per the editor’s minds) approach to how to properly summarize a sculptor and her influence on the broader field.
While the book includes the obvious household names of the likes of Jenny Holzer and Kara Walker, the real treats are the lesser-known figures, many of which have devoted fans within the art world but have yet to get their popular due. The entry on Danish sculptor Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, for example, could be the fodder for a Hollywood blockbuster, and certainly invites the reader to investigate further based on their own interests.
For those who have criticized the book for not delving further into each artist and only providing a snapshot of their work, that is not what this book is attempting to be. It is not an exhaustive history of sculpture, nor a fluid history of women in the medium; rather, it is a jumping off point for anyone interested in a bird’s-eye view of women sculptors. It encourages the reader to explore more and choose their own art historical adventure.