Sculptor, playwright, lyricist, actor and director. He was born in Baltimore, and studied at the New School in New York. He took part in several mixed exhibitions in the US before settling in the UK. He has since had solo exhibitions in London, at the Bruton Street Gallery (1996) and the Catto Gallery (1997). His exhibition, Faces of Olivier (28 portraits in relief) was unveiled by Lawrence Olivier at the Chichester Theatre in 1985. As a result of the popularity of his sculpture, Allies (1995), in New Bond Street, London, which comprises life-size bronze figures of Sir Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt seated on a park bench enjoying a conversation on either side of a space large enough for a passer-by to sit to have their photograph taken, Holofcener was commissioned by the consortium responsible for developing the Harbourside area of Bristol to provide three statues for Millennium Square, two of them seated on, and a third standing by, a bench: William Tyndale, Thomas Chatterton and William Penn (1999–2000). Continuing with the same theme, Holofcener later made a figure of William Shakespeare standing with one foot on a bench posed as if to declaim to whoever should sit beneath him. Entitling the piece Young Will, he presented it to Stratford-on-Avon District Council in 2016. For the stage he wrote Mr Wonderful, which starred Sammy Davis junior when it was staged on Broadway, and Before You Go (Broadway and West End). He acted on Broadway in Hello Dolly and Stop the World. In his later years he moved to Ventnor, Isle of Wight, and took British citizenship.
Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; D. Merritt and F. Greenacre, with K. Eustace, Public Sculpture of Bristol, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 145, 149, 151–53; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 9–10, 106.
Philip Ward-Jackson, 2011; revised, Terry Cavanagh, November 2024
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