William Tucker
Sculpture and Drawing
William Tucker
Sculpture and Drawing
William Tucker has been creating sculptures for more than five decades and is one of the most highly esteemed sculptors of our time. In addition to his sculptural work, he is also a prolific writer on the subject of sculpture.
With Phillip King and Tim Scott, William Tucker counted among the influential group of British sculptors who were introduced as the New Generation at the eponymous exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1965. Their work provided fresh inspiration for the development of abstract sculpture as well as a far broader interpretation of the concept of sculpture. Tucker was invited to show his work at the seminal Primary Structures exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1966, the defining moment for American Minimal Art.
His book The Language of Sculpture, with its idiosyncratic take on modern sculpture from Degas and Rodin to Brancusi and Matisse was published in 1974 to considerable acclaim.
Tucker’s recent sculptures take the human form as their reference. Despite their figurative reference, the sculptures are not immediately decipherable or identifiable. Rather, the works open up a wide range of associations, thus achieving their intense, undeniable physicality.
His sculptures have a presence that relates to our body and so makes us more aware. As Joy Sleeman suggests in The Sculpture of William Tucker, “Tucker’s sculpture asks fundamental questions as to what sculpture is and what it can be.” (Lund Humphries/The Henry Moore Foundation, 2007).
William Tucker was born in Cairo in 1935 and lived in the UK until he moved to the United States in the early 1980s. Initially residing in New York, he later settled in Williamsburg, Massachusetts. Important sculptures from Tucker’s recent period are in the collections of, among others, the Tate Gallery in London, the Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.
Selected Works
News
Gallery Exhibitions
Publications
William Tucker
Born 1935 in Cairo, Egypt
Lives and works in Massachusetts, USA
| 1959-1960 | Studies at St. Martin’s College of Art and Design, London |
| 1955-1958 | Studies at University of Oxford, England |
| 2011 | Elected as honorary National Academician, National Academy Museum, New York |
| 2010 | Lifetime Achievement Award, International Sculpture Center, Hamilton |
| 2009 | Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture, Royal Academy of Arts, London |
| 1995 | Rodin-Moore Memorial Prize, Second Fujisankei Biennale Hakone Open-Air Museum, Japan |
| 1991 | Sculpture Center Award for Distinction in Sculpture |
| 1980 | Guggenheim Fellowship |
|
1968-1970 |
Gregory Fellowship in Sculpture, University of Leeds |
Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland
Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AK
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Arts Council of Great Britain, London
British Council, London
The British Museum, London
City of Bilbao, Spain
Contemporary Art Society, London
Florida International University, Miami, FL
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
The Hakone Open-Air Museum, Tokyo, Japan
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, The Netherlands
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark
The Margulies Collection, Miami
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY
Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England
Tate Gallery, London
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
| 2018 | Kosme de Barañano, William Tucker – Mass and Figure, Estudios Durero, 2018 |
| 2016 | Dieter Schwarz, William Tucker, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, with essays by Julia Kelly, Dieter Schwarz and William Tucker, 2016 |
| 2015 | Kosme de Barañano, Tucker: Masa y Figura, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2015 |
|
2009 |
Marzio, Peter C. Masterpieces From The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Director’s Choice. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009. Illustrated in color, p.189 |
|
2007 |
Joy Sleeman, The Sculpture of William Tucker, Lund Humphries, England, 2007. |
|
2005 |
Sculpture from the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, edited by Karen O. Janovy, University of Nebraska Press, 2005, pages 185-187. |
|
2004 |
A Vision for 21st Century Sculpture, 10 year anniversary book, Sculpture at Goodwood, West Sussex, 2004. The Sculptural Idea, James J. Kelly, Fourth Edition, Waveland Press, Inc., Long Grove, Illinois, 2004. |
|
2003 |
Alan Windsor, British Sculptors of the Twentieth Century, Ashgate Publishing Limited, Aldershot, England, 2003. |
|
1999 |
Michael Auping, House of Sculpture, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX, 1999, page 12, illustrated page 6. |
|
|
Brooke Barrie, Contemporary Outdoor Sculpture, Rockport Publishers, Gloucester, MA, 1999, pages 152-153. |
|
1998 |
Tony Birks, The Alchemy of Sculpture, Marston House, 1998. |
|
1996 |
Irving Sandler, Art of the Postmodern Era: from the late 1960s to the Early 1990s, HarperCollins Publishers, 1996. |
|
1993 |
Sam Hunter & John Jacobus, Modern Art, Third Edition, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1993, page 337. |
|
1991 |
Daniel Wheeler, Art Since Mid Century 1945 to the Present, The Vendome Press, New York, 1991. |
|
1985 |
Dore Ashton, American Art Since 1945, Oxford University Press, New York, 1985. |
|
1984 |
The Seventh Dalhousie Drawing Exhibition: Actual Size, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1984. John McEwen, Sculptors’ Drawings, The British Council, London 1984. Frank Gettings, Drawings 1974-84, Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., 1984. Judith K. Collischan van Wagner, Reflections: New Conceptions of Nature, Hillwood Art Gallery, Long Island University, Greenvale, NY, 1984. |
|
1983 |
Artists Choose Artists II, CDS Gallery, New York, 1983. Judith K. Collischan van Wagner, Monumental Drawings by Sculptors, Hillwood Art Gallery, Long Island University, Greenvale, NY, 1983. |
|
1981 |
Sandy Nairne & Nicholas Serota, ed., British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1981.
John Elderfield, New Work on Paper I, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1981.
Il Luogo della Forma: Nove Scultoi a Castelvecchio, Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, 1981. |
|
1980 |
Skulptur im 20. Jahrhundert, Wenkenpark Riehen, Basel, 1980. |
|
1979 |
The Prospect Mountain Show: An Homage to David Smith, Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, New York, 1979. |
|
1977 |
William Tucker, Sculptures, Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1977-1978. |
|
1972 |
The Condition of Sculpture: A Selection of Recent Sculpture by Younger British and Foreign Artists, Hayward Gallery Arts, Council of Great Britain, London, 1972.
William Tucker, British Pavilion XXXVI Venice Biennale, 1972. |
|
1967 |
Guggenheim International Exhibition 1967: Sculpture from Twenty Nations, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1967. |
|
1966 |
Sculpture in the Open Air, Greater London Council: Battersea Park, London 1966. |