Artist: Bjørn Skaarup
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About Bjørn Skaarup
Bjørn Okholm Skaarup holds a M.A. in history and art history from the University of Copenhagen, and a Ph.D. in history from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Skaarup has also furthered his education with post-doctoral studies at the Warburg Institute in London and Columbia University. In addition to his career as a self-taught sculptor, Skaarup has written and illustrated numerous books on historical, archaeological, and anatomical subjects.
Okholm Skaarup has created a contemporary bestiary, or classical book of animals, in bronze. Each sculpture presents a whimsical story or allegory to decipher, with sources ranging from ancient fables and art history to music and modern animation. The Majestic Lion, traditional king of the animals, wears the crown and armor of a great monarch in the style of Medici court sculptor Giambologna, yet he sits astride a rocking horse, a reference to his fleeting and jovial power. Frogs reenact Homeric battles in the Batrachomyomachia and Micenaean Horse, while mice peer through spectacles and listen at telephones as The Five Senses. A cheetah rides a scooter to move faster, a giraffe stands on stilts to reach higher, and a kangaroo bounces on a pogo stick—a “kængurustylte” in Okholm Skaarup’s native Danish.
In Okholm Skaarup’s intricately polychrome work, he explores the voluminous form of a tutu and leotard-clad hippo, which at once references Degas’s Little Dancer of Fourteen Years and Disney’s Fantasia. Another hippo, sprawled in the pose of Ingres’s Grande Odalisque, looks at the viewer over her shoulder with a flirtatious grin. And a dinosaur paleontologist is mystified to discover the Flintstones’ Flintmobile among the rubble.
Okholm Skaarup’s indoor and outdoor sculptures have been the subject of museum exhibitions throughout the world, with notable public exhibitions at the Koldinghus Museum, Kolding, Denmark; the Museo Cenacolo di Ognissanti and Four Seasons Hotel, Florence; Hotel Cipriani, Venice, the Collectivité of St. Barth, and the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut. The monumental Hippo Ballerina has been exhibited at Dante Park, opposite Lincoln Center, The Flatiron District, Girl Scouts of America’s New York Headquarters, Pershing Square in New York, and the Ferguson Library, in Stamford, CT.
Okholm Skaarup lives and works in New York City.