Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, January 11, 2023: Anthony Pryor, an Australian sculptor (#1749)

Wednesday, January 11, 2023

Artist of the Day, January 11, 2023: Anthony Pryor, an Australian sculptor (#1749)

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Anthony Pryor (1951-1991) studied sculpture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, later becoming a lecturer there. He has exhibited his work – in wood, granite and steel – in most states and overseas, and has won several awards. Anthony Pryor died in 1991. His work is represented in the Australian National Gallery in Canberra and in the Victorian and Western Australian state galleries, as well as several tertiary and regional centres.

In 1974 Pryor visited Japan alone and in 1975 with Barlett and Dall'Ava. The Japanese sculpture tradition and the materials used stone and wood, as well as Japanese architecture, inspired him in the way he structured later works, such as Omikuji Bako-Bako , Sengai's box , Sengai's marker and Sengai's arch , named after the Japanese Zen monk Sengai Gibon (Rinzai-shu), from the early 1980s . Other sources of inspiration included North American native art , Egyptian art (particularly hieroglyphics ), the work of Antoni Gaudí , the abstractmetal art by English sculptor Anthony Caro . Pryor left the collective studio in mid-1979.

In 1982/1983 Pryor stayed in Amsterdam . Some of the works he made in Amsterdam bear names such as Prinseneiland , Buying a stairway to heaven and Untitled (Amsterdam) . In 1984 he was artist in residence at the home of Australian painter Arthur Boyd in Italy . Due to the absence of the equipment necessary for him, he started making sketches, something he had not done before. [1]It completely changed his work and he also started making models from that moment on, which had the positive result that the number of assignments he received increased. His last commission, before his untimely death in 1991, was a seven-piece sculpture The Performers (each three meters high) for St. Kilda Road in Melbourne. The marble used in the sculpture came from Carrara , where Pryor himself went to supervise the work.

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