Carl Milles

Carl Milles (1875-1955) was one of the most important Swedish sculptors of the twentieth century and one of the most influential public sculptors working in America during the interwar and postwar decades. Born Carl Wilhelm Emil Andersson, Milles began his working life as a cabinet-making apprentice and pursued technical studies as a young man in Stockholm. In 1897 he set out for Chile, intending to manage a school of gymnastics, but a stopover in Paris changed the course of his life. His planned brief stay in the French capital stretched into seven years, during which time he supported himself as a cabinet maker while pursuing his artistic education. He studied in the studio of Auguste Rodin, whose influence would inform his sculptural development for the rest of his life, and he began exhibiting at the Paris Salon, where he established his early reputation as a sculptor of promise.

Milles returned to Sweden in 1906 and began building Millesgården, the extraordinary home, studio, and sculpture garden overlooking the water in Lidingö outside Stockholm, from which he would produce many of his best-known public monuments. He and his wife Olga donated the home and grounds to the Swedish people in 1936, and Millesgården today remains one of the country's most beloved cultural destinations, its terraces populated by his own sculptures set among fountains and gardens.

In 1931 Milles accepted a twenty-year appointment as professor of sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, one of the most influential American art schools of the twentieth century. His Cranbrook years brought a remarkable series of American public commissions, including The Hand of God outside Detroit's Frank Murphy Hall of Justice, The Meeting of the Waters in Saint Louis, and The Sun Singer in Falls Church, Virginia. These monumental figures, often with their characteristic upward reach and Milles's signature elongated proportions, transformed public spaces across the United States.

Milles returned to Europe in 1951 and took up residency at the American Academy in Rome, returning to Millesgården for summer visits. He passed away at his beloved Swedish home in 1955. His sculptures are held in major museums throughout the world.