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Public Statues and Sculpture Association

Professor Michael Sandle RA

Michael Sandle is widely recognised as one of the finest sculptors in the world, and as a brilliant draughtsman and printmaker. He was born in Weymouth in 1936 and studied at the Douglas Isle of Man School of Art 1951-54. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art 1956-59 and worked as a lithographer in Paris in 1960. He lived in Germany 1973-99, becoming Professor of Sculpture at Pforzheim in 1977 and then at Karlsruhe from 1980. Elected a Royal Academician in 1990, he resigned because of the way the RA handled the Myra Hindley painting controversy during the 1997 Sensation exhibition and was re-elected in 2005 and was awarded the first Kenneth Armitage Fellowship 2005-07. His most notable commissions include the Malta Siege-Bell Memorial at Valletta 1988-92 for which he was awarded the Henry Herring Memorial by the US National Sculpture Association and The Seafarers’ Memorial (2000-01) in London. His work is represented in numerous public collections in the UK and overseas, including the British Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the V&A and Tate in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and in museums in Germany, Poland, Japan and Australia.