Manuel Neri

by Bruce Nixon

"This striking publication focuses on relief sculptures and related drawings by Manuel Neri. The extensive body of work is clearly grounded in a long sculptural tradition that stretches back through the Renaissance and Medieval sculpture to ancient architectural sites, and underscores Neri's significance as a sculptor of international note whose works in plaster, ceramic, bronze, and stone have merited him the 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center. Neri has created figurative relief sculpture over a period of twenty-five years. His concern with the dynamic nature of the architectural or spatial environment has developed his keen understanding of its potency as a setting for the figure. His pieces possess incredibly rich and evocative surfaces and his ability to depict the figural form in various media with equal mastery and sensitivity is unrivaled. This publication documents not only reliefs but also more than fifty years of Neri's engagement with the