Elgin Willigerodt

about me

I was born in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1969. Even when I was at school, I was interested in sculpture, both figurative and abstract. Artists who inspired me from the very beginning: Georg Kolbe, Käthe Kollwitz, Gerhard Marcks and the artists of Expressionism. Later, Archipenko and the Russian constructivists.

After leaving school, I decided to combine my passion for art with my love of the French language. The consequence: my studies at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg (today: Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin, Strasbourg).

 

After my basic studies, my path initially led me to iron sculpture, constructive development and the construction of welded and forged sculptures.  At the same time, I increasingly developed the desire to devote myself more to figurative representation.

 In 1993 I went for two guest semesters to the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where the tradition of figurative sculpture was still very much alive. Here I studied classical drawing, portrait and nude sculpture.

 Back in Strasbourg, I graduated as a sculptor in 1996 and returned to Berlin a little later.

 I was probably influenced by both: on the one hand, the realization of abstract sculptures made of steel, and on the other hand: the original, modelling with my hands, in clay, the precise observation of a person and the lifelike reproduction of a personality.