Mitzi Cunliffe

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Mitzi Solomon Cunliffe (January 1, 1918 – December 30, 2006) was an American sculptor. She was most famous for designing the golden trophy in the shape of a theatrical mask that would go on to represent the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and be presented as the BAFTA award. She also produced textiles, ceramics, and jewelery.

Sculpture on the western side of the Chartres Cathedral, an inspiration to Cunliffe.
Sculpture on the western side of the Chartres Cathedral, an inspiration to Cunliffe.

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[edit] Early life

Cunliffe was born Mitzi Solomon in New York.[1][2] She attended the Art Students League from 1930 to 1933[1] and read Fine Arts and Fine Arts Education at Columbia University from 1935 to 1940, receiving a BSc in 1939 and an MA in 1940.[1]

Upon graduation, she moved to Paris where she studied at the Académie Colarossi for a year.[1] After viewing the western side of Cathedral of Chartres, she settled on becoming an architectural sculptor. Following this she studied for a period in Sweden.[3] Her early works, of free-standing figures, were admired by Le Corbusier.[1] She was awarded the Widener gold medal by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.[1]

In 1949, she met and married British academic Marcus Cunliffe. He was a lecturer at Manchester University, and she moved with him to Didsbury.[1] They had a son and two daughters (one of whom is Shay Cunliffe, CDG Award-winning costume designer). They lived at 8 Lewes Crescent, Brighton from 1964 until they were divorced in 1971. (from telephone books)[2]

[edit] Works

Her first large scale commission was two pieces for the Festival of Britain in 1951. One, known as "Root Bodied Forth", shows figures emerging from a tree, and was displayed at the entrance of the Festival.[1] The second, a pair of bronze handles in the form of hands, adorned the Regatta Restaurant.[2] She created a similar piece, in the form of knots, in 1952 which remains at the School of Civic Design at Liverpool University.[2]

Heaton Park pumping station was built in 1955, for which Cunliffe was commissioned to design and craft a relief panel whicih depicts the water being brought from Haweswater to Manchester. It has been described as "a remarkable piece of public art on ... a mundane industrial building".[3] The building was listed in 1998 as a "complete work of art", the only such listing for any building built after 1945.[1][3] That year, she was also commissioned to create the BAFTA mask for the Guild of Television Producers (which merged with the British Film Academy in 1958 to form the Society of Film and Television Arts, renamed the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1976).[1][4]

She created a large pierced screen for the restaurant at Lewis's department store in Liverpool in 1957. She bought the piece when the shop closed in the 1980s, and moved it to her home at Seillans in the south of France.[1][2] She also designed textiles for David Whitehead and Tootal Broadhurst, and ceramics for Pilkington.[1][2]

She developed a technique for mass-producing abstract designs in relief in concrete, as architectural decoration, which she described as "sculpture by the yard".[2] She used the technique to decorate buildings throughout the UK, but particularly in and around Manchester. Her last major architectural commission was the creation of four carved stone panels for Scottish Life House on Cheapside in the City of London in 1970.[1]

[edit] Later life and death

Cunliffe suffered from arthritis and eye problems in later life. She gave up sculpture to teach at Thames Polytechnic (which later became London South Bank University) from 1971 to 1976, and then at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, the University of Pennsylvania, and Concordia University in Montreal.[1]

She later developed Alzheimer's disease, and retired to Oxford, but she remained in the public eye.[1] Her last exhibition took place in Oxford in 2001, where she presented a display for Alzheimer's sufferers. The Ruskin School of Drawing at Oxford University named a prize in her honour.

She died at her home in Oxfordshire, two days before her 89th birthday.[2] She was survived by her children.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Obituary, The Guardian, February 12, 2007.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h "Obituaries: Mitzi Cunliffe", Harwood, E, The Independent, January 18, 2007; Retrieved on 2007-02-05
  3. ^ a b c Rhead, E (2004) "Time to look after our public art", Manchester Forum, retrieved on 2007-02-05
  4. ^ Obituary at BAFTA website.