Thomas Houseago

Born in 1972 in Leeds, Thomas Houseago is a British sculptor. He studied art at the Jacob Kramer College in Leeds, then at Central Saint Martins School of Art in London and finally at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. He lived in Brussels for a few years before moving to Los Angeles in 2003. He had a difficult start, as his work was the subject of much criticism and he was unable to sell his art and was forced to work in construction to support himself. It was only in 2006, when art collectors from Miami, Donald and Mera Rubell, bought several of his works, that his career took off.

The artist focuses on the representation of the human figure in space and their interactions. Imposing, even monumental, his sculptures inspire paradoxical feelings, both a feeling of fragility and strength, which contribute to the uniqueness of his work. The artist creates anthropomorphic sculptures inspired by art brut as well as experimental, hybrid sculptures. He also highlights the monumental dimensions of his statues and their darkness to express isolation and introspection.

Houseago uses a multiplicity of materials to create his sculptures: wood, plaster, aluminium, concrete, bronze... He is inspired by Brancusi, Zadkine, Giacometti, sculptors from Africa or the Renaissance, those of the Neolithic and today, and all his sources of inspiration contribute to the complexity of the work.

Muna El Fituri, Houseago's wife, made a film in which the artist's creative process is explained: "I wanted to reveal the creative process, to show that the way I use my body is the key to everything," he says.

His work has been exhibited in various institutions such as the Musée des beaux arts de Rennes in 2018, the Elgiz Museum in Istanbul and he had a retrospective at the Musée d'art Moderne de la ville de Paris in 2019.