PHILIPPE ANTHONIOZ (b. 1953)
Updated: Apr 23, 2025
Philippe Anthonioz is described as a furniture sculptor whose approach begins with a blank canvas.
Always uncertain whether it will be a table or light or what diameter will be when he begins a new piece.
His medium is plaster, not bronze. “Plaster is my master material, from which I make moulds. For me plaster is a material that you can return to over and over again.”
Based between Provence and Paris, the artist has produced a significant amount of work from nonfunctional to functional structures.
Influenced by his childhood and his parents who shared in deep interest in the arts amongst a circle of friends that included some of the most critical artists and intellectuals of the 20th century in Paris.
“Ever since I was very young, I liked to work with my hands.”
His formative years from 1972 and 1982, working as a carpenter helped him develop a special affinity and discipline which pushed him to approach his work from a constructivist perspective.
Diego Giacometti who was challenged by his hands due to health condition, asked Philippe in 1982 to work with him. And this is during those years, that the latter became an extension of Giacometti's hands. Most of the fixtures conceptualised for the Musée Picasso commission in Paris were fabricated hence this way.
Philippe Anthonioz's work is poetic, punctuated by textured materials and forms which are gracefully dignified.
Pierre Daix said of his work that the functional becomes poetry, the design of sculpture intervenes with the art of living.
