The Most Famous

SCULPTORS from United States

This page contains a list of the greatest American Sculptors. The pantheon dataset contains 258 Sculptors, 17 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the 4th most number of Sculptors behind France, and Greece.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary American Sculptors of all time. This list of famous American Sculptors is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of American Sculptors.

1. Alexander Calder (1898 - 1976)

With an HPI of 64.55, Alexander Calder is the most famous American Sculptor. His biography has been translated into 47 different languages on wikipedia.

Alexander "Sandy" Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his monumental public sculptures. Calder preferred not to analyze his work, saying, "Theories may be all very well for the artist himself, but they shouldn't be broadcast to other people."

2. Robert Smithson (1938 - 1973)

With an HPI of 58.69, Robert Smithson is the 2nd most famous American Sculptor. His biography has been translated into 28 different languages.

Robert Smithson (January 2, 1938 – July 20, 1973) was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and museums and is held in public collections. He was one of the founders of the land art movement whose best known work is the Spiral Jetty (1970).

3. Isamu Noguchi (1904 - 1988)

With an HPI of 58.45, Isamu Noguchi is the 3rd most famous American Sculptor. His biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Isamu Noguchi (野口勇, Noguchi Isamu, English: ; November 17, 1904 – December 30, 1988) was an American artist, furniture designer and landscape architect whose career spanned six decades from the 1920s. Known for his sculpture and public artworks, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces, some of which are still manufactured and sold. In 1947, Noguchi began a collaboration with the Herman Miller company, when he joined with George Nelson, Paul László and Charles Eames to produce a catalog containing what is often considered to be the most influential body of modern furniture ever produced, including the iconic Noguchi table which remains in production today. His work is displayed at the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in New York City.

4. Robert Morris (1931 - 2018)

With an HPI of 54.85, Robert Morris is the 4th most famous American Sculptor. His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.

Robert Morris (February 9, 1931 – November 28, 2018) was an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He was regarded as having been one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd, but also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement, and installation art. Morris lived and worked in New York. In 2013 as part of the October Files, MIT Press published a volume on Morris, examining his work and influence, edited by Julia Bryan-Wilson.

5. Dan Flavin (1933 - 1996)

With an HPI of 53.49, Dan Flavin is the 5th most famous American Sculptor. His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Dan Flavin (April 1, 1933 – November 29, 1996) was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.

6. Anna Coleman Ladd (1878 - 1939)

With an HPI of 51.48, Anna Coleman Ladd is the 6th most famous American Sculptor. Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Anna Coleman Watts Ladd (July 15, 1878 – June 3, 1939) was an American sculptor in Massachusetts who devoted her time and skills throughout World War I to designing prosthetics for soldiers who were disfigured from injuries received in combat.

7. Walter De Maria (1935 - 2013)

With an HPI of 50.69, Walter De Maria is the 7th most famous American Sculptor. His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Walter Joseph De Maria (October 1, 1935 – July 25, 2013) was an American artist, sculptor, illustrator and composer, who lived and worked in New York City. Walter de Maria's artistic practice is connected with minimal art, conceptual art, and land art of the 1960s. LACMA director Michael Govan said, "I think he's one of the greatest artists of our time." Govan, who worked with De Maria for a number of years, found De Maria's work "singular, sublime and direct".

8. Jacob Epstein (1880 - 1959)

With an HPI of 49.88, Jacob Epstein is the 8th most famous American Sculptor. His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.

Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American and British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1910. Early in his career, in 1912, The Pall Mall Gazette described Epstein as "a Sculptor in Revolt, who is in deadly conflict with the ideas of current sculpture." Revolting against ornate, pretty art, he made bold, often harsh and massive forms in bronze or stone. His sculpture is distinguished by its vigorous rough-hewn realism. Avant-garde in concept and style, his works often shocked audiences. This was not only a result of their, often explicit, sexual content, but also because they abandoned the conventions of classical Greek sculpture favoured by European academic critics and sculptors, to experiment instead with the aesthetics of art traditions as diverse as those of India, China, ancient Greece, West Africa and the Pacific Islands. His larger sculptures were his most expressive and experimental, but also his most vulnerable. Such factors may have focused disproportionate attention on certain aspects of Epstein's long and productive career, throughout which he aroused hostility, especially challenging taboos surrounding the depiction of sexuality. He often produced controversial works that challenged ideas on what was appropriate subject matter for public artworks. Epstein would often sculpt the images of friends, casual acquaintances, and even people he spotted on the street. He worked even on his dying day. He also painted; many of his watercolours and gouaches were of Epping Forest, where he lived for a time. These were often exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in London. Bronze portrait sculpture formed one of Epstein's staple products, and perhaps the best known. These sculptures were often executed with roughly textured surfaces, expressively manipulating small surface planes and facial details. Epstein was Jewish, and negative reviews of his work sometimes took on an antisemitic flavour, though he did not attribute the "average unfavorable criticism" of his work to antisemitism. After Epstein died, Henry Moore wrote a tribute in The Sunday Times which included a recognition of Epstein's central role in the development of modern sculpture in Britain. "He took the brickbats, he took the insults, he faced the howls of derision with which artists since Rembrandt have learned to become familiar. And as far as sculpture in this century is concerned he took them first.... We have lost a great sculptor and a great man.": 274

9. Dennis Oppenheim (1938 - 2011)

With an HPI of 49.72, Dennis Oppenheim is the 9th most famous American Sculptor. His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Dennis Oppenheim (September 6, 1938 – January 21, 2011) was an American conceptual artist, performance artist, earth artist, sculptor and photographer. Dennis Oppenheim's early artistic practice is an epistemological questioning about the nature of art, the making of art and the definition of art: a meta-art that arose when strategies of the Minimalists were expanded to focus on site and context. As well as an aesthetic agenda, the work progressed from perceptions of the physical properties of the gallery to the social and political context, largely taking the form of permanent public sculpture in the last two decades of a highly prolific career, whose diversity could exasperate his critics.

10. Audrey Munson (1891 - 1996)

With an HPI of 48.33, Audrey Munson is the 10th most famous American Sculptor. Her biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Audrey Marie Munson (June 8, 1891 – February 20, 1996) was an American artist's model and film actress, considered to be "America's first supermodel." In her time, she was variously known as "Miss Manhattan", the "Panama–Pacific Girl", the "Exposition Girl" and "American Venus." She was the model or inspiration for more than twelve statues in New York City, and many others elsewhere. Munson appeared in four silent films, including unclothed in Inspiration (1915). She was one of the first American actresses to appear nude in a non-pornographic film.

People

Pantheon has 22 people classified as American sculptors born between 1805 and 1946. Of these 22, 1 (4.55%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living American sculptors include Dale Chihuly. The most famous deceased American sculptors include Alexander Calder, Robert Smithson, and Isamu Noguchi. As of April 2024, 5 new American sculptors have been added to Pantheon including Chris Burden, Horatio Greenough, and Beverly Pepper.