Julie Rotblatt-Amrany

Julie Rotblatt-Amrany (born July 23, 1958) is an American sculptor and painter identified with the resurgence of the figure in modern art. Rebelling against the academic bias against figurative art in the 1970s and 1980s, she has brought new vitality to the subject of the human form by integrating into her work recent discoveries in astronomy, physics, and medicine. Her pieces often juxtapose polar opposites such as serenity and tension, and are underpinned philosophically by a view of the universe as a process of endless transformation, with no true beginnings or ends. She has produced a wide array of public art, honoring figures from veterans to sports and film icons to astronauts, while simultaneously creating more experimental paintings and sculptures that explore her personal vision. She is co-founder of the Fine Art Studio of Rotblatt-Amrany in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, a studio that brings to the United States the aims and traditions of the ateliers of Europe, as well as The Julia Foundation, a not-for-profit arts organization.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Julie Rotblatt grew up in the northern suburb of Highland Park. Passionate about the arts and dance, she completed a B.A. in art at the University of Colorado, Boulder, spending her junior year abroad at the University of Bordeaux, France. Enchanted by the works of Michelangelo, she found her own fascination for the human figure at odds with the prevailing mood in academia, where her professors considered figurative art passé. Swimming against the flow, Rotblatt took training at the Art Institute of Chicago in the figure—drawing, painting, and sculpting from life. After moving to the San Francisco Bay area in 1982, she focused on figurative studies at the College of Marin and dissected cadavers at Indian Valley College in Novato in a program intended for medical students. She also studied from the model under the direction of sculptor Manuel Neri at the University of California, Davis.

Rotblatt participated in various art projects in the Bay area, including assisting on a mural for the Oakland Art Museum. Under Manuel Neri she developed an interest in carving marble, and after two years she traveled to Italy. In Perugia in 1985 she took part in a program offered by Boston University, drawing from life and experimenting with stone.

Afterward she moved north to Pietrasanta—to the region where Michelangelo had opened new marble quarries and created many of his masterpieces. She began work at Studio Sem, which executed commissions for major sculptors such as Henry Moore. There she created Transference in Time, which reflected her growing fascination with the stream-like quality of space and time and the eternal nature of consciousness. Switching to Santoli’s Studio, she devoted several months to the creation of a large bas-relief on a one-ton block of rose-colored slate from Assisi. Titled “Holding the Source,” the work was later lost to history after being shipped to the United States—destroyed in a northern California earthquake.

...
Wikipedia