Helaine Blumenfeld OBE at Gainsborough’s House

Sculptures by Helaine Blumenfeld OBE will be on view in the gardens and interior of Gainsborough’s House over the summer. ‘Helaine Blumenfeld: Tree of Life’ will feature three bronze sculptures in the garden – the first exterior exhibition at the museum in over a decade – as well as a marble in the galleries. Blumenfeld creates sculptures in marble, wood, and bronze meant for public installation. Her work exists in a tantalising zone between abstraction and figuration, creating impossibly thin, undulating structures through innovative techniques.

The display provides a new and unique context to Blumenfeld’s work, surrounded by the walled garden of naturalistic planting and fruit trees associated with Thomas Gainsborough. The exhibition also sees Blumenfeld’s sculptures in dialogue with the poetic sensibility, fluidity of form, and dream-like imagery of Thomas Gainsborough’s art. Both artists have sought to integrate human and botanical forms in their work to express and observe humanity and the natural world. Gainsborough merged figures in his portraits with the landscape behind them, while Blumenfeld fuses organic, figurative and botanical forms in spiritual sculptures.

In the gardens, ‘Tree of Life: Encounter’ depicts a plant-like structure, where three strands are joined together at the base but separate and flower in an upward movement. Originally commissioned by the Woolf Institute with the notion of uniting religions together in peace, the flowering represents hope that is breaching dissonance and chaos. ‘Volare’ and ‘Flight’ both depict movement with a merging of the physical and spiritual. The essence of the human form is depicted in an aspirational reach upwards, towards the sky and a higher realm of being.

Inside the museum is ‘Exodus IV’, a marble work in part inspired by stories of refugee crossings in the Mediterranean. Made up of several layers that could be waves crashing against each other or collapsing life jackets, the weight-less feel and organic shapes demonstrate Blumenfeld’s expertise in using physical materials to communicate spiritual ideas.

Blumenfeld says: “I am thrilled to be showing my sculptures in the splendid gardens and newly renovated visitor facilities of Gainsborough’s House. I have long seen a connection between the spirit inherent in my sculptures and Gainsborough’s luminous and ethereal landscapes, which capture the sublime beauty of the countryside.”