Modern Sculpture is known as a phenomenon that lasted from 1860s through the 1970s. During this period artists started breaking old norms and almost reinvented the art status of sculpture. We can mention such talented sculptors as Pablo Picasso, Peter Voulkos, George E. Ohr, and Kenneth Price as being key to this process. They created three-dimensional structures through the combination of disparate objects into a whole. They used various materials, including ceramics, clay, bronze, wood etc.
Modern sculpture as well as art in general is impacted by successive art styles like Geometric Abstraction, Cubism, De Stijl, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism Suprematism, Constructivism, Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop-Art. The advent of Surrealism, for example, was significant in terms of sculpture because it led to things occasionally being described as “sculpture” that would not have been so previously, such as “involuntary sculpture” in several senses, including coulage.
Also important was the vocabulary of reduction and abstraction, which was seen throughout the 1930s and 1940s and was exemplified by artists such as Gaston Lachaise, Sir Jacob Epstein, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore, Julio Gonzlez, Pablo Serrano, Jacques Lipchitz at that time, and later in the century by Carl Andre and John Safer who added motion and monumentality to the themes of purity of line.
By the 1960s Abstract expressionism, Geometric abstraction and Minimalism predominated. Some works of the period are: the ‘Cubi’ works of David Smith, the large scale work of
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