Sculpture

Sculpture is the three-dimensional visual art whose works are created by one of four main processes: carving, modelling, casting or constructing. Carving (a subtractive method) consists in removing material from a block of stone or wood; modelling (an additive method) in shaping form from a soft material such as clay or wax; casting translates a model into metal through a mould; constructing (assemblage) joins separate elements into a single whole. Sculpture exists in real space, can be viewed from different sides, and the play of light on its volumes and textures is an important part of its expressiveness. A distinction is made between sculpture in the round, which can be walked around, and relief, which projects from a plane. The history of sculpture reaches back to prehistoric figurines and continues through the grandeur of Egyptian, Greek and Roman work, the Gothic, the Renaissance with Michelangelo, the Baroque of Bernini and on to the modern era, when Rodin renewed the language of form and the twentieth century gave rise to abstract, kinetic and constructed sculpture. The Ukrainian tradition of sculpture embraces medieval Rus carving, Baroque ornament, monumental work and modernism, represented by masters such as Alexander Archipenko, who radically rethought volume and void in world sculpture.