Jacob Epstein (Epstein Jacob)

(1880-1959)
Born in New York on November 10, 1880. Attended courses at the League of studying art in New York, in his youth had some success in the drawings and illustrations. Started studying sculpture and in 1902 went to Paris, where he studied at the Academy of Arts and the Academy Julian. In 1905 he moved to London and lived there until the end of life. In 1954, received a knighthood.
In the remarkable bronze portraits of Joseph Conrad, George Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein, Paul Robeson, Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie, the family of the sculptor, and others. Epstein demonstrates the ability to fine interpretation of the image and the particular interpretation of the sculptural mass. Most of his works in bronze are impressionistic, uneven surface, which sometimes contributes to vitality of a portrait, but it is particularly good in his monumental works.

In 1907 Epstein received an order for 18 large sculptures for the building of England Medical Association in London, which marked the beginning of his career on a monumental sculpture. Most of the monumental works Epstein criticized for a strong distorsion. Among them - the tombstone of Oscar Wilde in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris (1912); statue of Rome in the Hudson Memorial in Hyde Park in London (1925), Madonna and Child (1927, . NY, . Museum of Modern Art), . which served as a model for the Muslim of British India, statues of Day and Night on one of the London Underground (1928-1929); Meter alabaster colossus, Adam (1939) and Christ in Glory in the cathedral city of Llandaff, near Cardiff in Wales (1957),
.

Unusual proportions in the works of Epstein largely due to the influence of African sculpture, which he collected from 1912. Detailed information about creativity and aesthetic theories Epstein found in two of his books, . The sculptor says (in collaboration with Arnold Haskell, . 1931) and in his autobiography, Let there be sculpture (1940, enlarged and revised edition 1955: Epstein, . Autobiography),
. Epstein died in London on August 19, 1959.