Henry Schiowitz Sculpture

Henry Schiowitz was born in Pennsylvania in 1955.  From an early age he developed a passion for art.  At 12 years old he began to frequent a local jewelry store where he learned to cast small sculptures in silver.  By 13 he had set up a studio in the basement of his parents’ home and in 1970 had his first exhibition.

Schiowitz was in Israel during the war of 1973, where he did a variety of jobs on a kibbutz.  From Israel he traveled to Greece then on to Crete where he had his first experience carving stone.  He camped out for a month in a cave, part of a series of caves previously inhabited for years as a leper colony.  From Greece he traveled by boat to the port city of Brindisi in southern Italy.  After making his way north and spending a month in Florence he then moved to Pietrasanta, arriving January 1, 1974.  Here, Schiowitz had found the perfect place to develop as a sculptor.  Coupled with a tradition of four centuries of marble carving, there were bronze foundries, mold makers, blacksmith toolmakers and all support services necessary for this town’s primary industry of sculpture.  Upon arriving he knew he had found his new home.  He had been given the names of two people: one an American Catholic priest and sculptor who worked for the Vatican and had been living in Italy since the 1950s, Father Thomas McGlynn, and the second, Sem Ghelardini, a man who worked for sculptors, such as Jean Arp, Henry Moore, and Isamu Noguchi, among others, turning their models into monumental stone and marble works of art.

Schiowitz was told he could find Sem at a local bar, a serious place run by a prim woman and her four daughters.  He arrived at 6:30 AM speaking only the most rudimentary Italian and made it understood he was looking for Sem.  Shortly after, Sem walked in with his signature cap at a jaunty angle, looking like a cross between Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.  He ambled up to the counter and was told a young American was waiting for him.  With a broad smile he invited Schiowitz up to join him and asked, “Bevi la grappa?”  Schiowitz had no idea what it meant but smiled back and said “Si.”  Three grappas later, he stumbled over to Sem’s sculpture studio and was introduced to Alfio, one of Sem’s artisans.  Sem said, “Alfio, this boy wants to carve marble.”  He showed Schiowitz a rock weighing 1,000 lbs and said, “this is a hammer, this is a chisel, go to work!”

To this day, one of the finest moments in Schiowitz’s career was about five years later when he met Sem in the main piazza and was greeted with the words, “Bon giorno Maestro.”  Sem was a man who rarely complimented and never flattered.  Pietrasanta in those years was the closest thing to Paris’s Monmartre of the 1920s.  A pantheon of world-class artists gathered in this small town for one thing, to produce sculpture.  They worked in the day and talked art at night.  Schiowitz, the youngest at that time, was humbled by his acceptance from these older more established artists and worked hard to maintain their respect. It was this atmosphere that laid the foundation of his formal training, Pietrasanta, a place where he still retains a studio 40 years later.

In 1980 Schiowitz opened a studio in Venice, California, but after one year he returned to Pietrasanta.  During these years he exhibited throughout Europe and the United States.  In 1987 he received a commission from Gruen Watch Corporation in New York City to produce a monumental bronze for their corporate headquarters.  Upon completion, he traveled to Southeast Asia, settling in Mahabalipuram, India, a place renowned for its granite carvers.  Schiowitz describes this year as one of his most fecund periods.  At the time, a small sleepy place with dirt roads, he settled in an old beach resort built by the French in the 1960s.  Slated for renovation he was given one of the older isolated bungalows facing the Indian Ocean.  He rented a plot of land across the road from the “resort” and had a studio of palm thatch constructed.  He hired half a dozen craftsmen and together over a period of a year produced a body of work in black granite.  These sculptures were exhibited at the U.S.I.S. Gallery at the American Consulate in Madras in 1988.  In 1989 Schiowitz returned to Pietrasanta.

Years later Schiowitz relocated to New York City where he participated in a variety of exhibitions including an exhibition with Joseph Stella and Jacques Lipchitz.  During that period he divided his time between the USA, Italy and Mexico.  In 1995 he spent time in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico working in bronze, silver and the local volcanic stone.  He continued to work on commissions for private collections and in 1997 had a retrospective at the Ramis Barquet Gallery in Monterrey, Mexico.

In 2001 Schiowitz returned to Pietrasanta to carve “Reclamation of a Classical Torso” from a 5-ton block of Carrara white marble.  In 2003 he established a U.S. base in Naples, Florida, continuing to divide his time between the USA and Italy.  In 2004 Schiowitz conceived the design for Time Fragment / Homage to the Masters. This sculpture depicts the head of Michelangelo’s David lying on its side as an enlarged fragment of a colossal whole.  This remnant; detached, eyes open, fiercely determined, places a contextual perspective upon the viewer; familiar, yet new.  The sculpture is not only based on this singular work of Michelangelo.  It is entitled as such, Masters, because it is an inclusive work of art—from Greco-Roman fragments to a small seminal piece from 1908 in white marble by Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncusi, Head of a Sleeping Child.  Masters also refers to the dozens of artisans working in both marble and bronze from Pietrasanta, Italy who five centuries later, participated in the four-year production of this, still technically challenging, hand made contemporary sculpture, completed in 2010. 

Following Time Fragment / Homage to Masters, an intensively collaborative production, the artist decided to return to his roots: a hammer, an anvil, and an oxyacetylene torch.  Schiowitz continues to work and develop new concepts.