The Big Picture - Feature: Exhibition - Marcus Egli’s at The Woolff gallery until March 14

Published: 3 February, 2011

MARCUS Egli,  one of Switzerland’s most successful sculptors, creates aluminium figures which he calls “Hominium”. Each of these remarkable pieces is individually crafted: starting with raw aluminium, he heats, hammers, saws, welds and polishes each piece by hand, making each figure unique. 

His first solo exhibition in the UK is currently on display at The Woolff gallery, where some 15,000  sculpted figures can be seen in rows, lines, blocks, some in cages, others discarded. They illustrate Marcus’s concern with freedom and the movement and treatment of people. 

Marcus Egli was born in Zurich in 1957 and he now lives and works in the Jura Mountains in the Canton of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was offered a bursary to study manual arts but before taking up his college place he travelled to America. On his return he realised that he valued his independence too much and decided to set up his own studio. 

He bought a small aluminium forge and workshop, where he was finally able to indulge in his lifelong passion of creating with his hands. “I established myself as a self-taught artist in 1985,” he says, “and concern myself at the present time with the standardisation of man.”

• Marcus Egli’s exhibition runs until March 14 at The Woolff gallery, 89 Charlotte Street, W1, Monday-Friday 10.30am-6pm, Saturday 11am-5pm, 

020 7631 0551, info@woolffgallery.co.uk, www.woolffgallery.co.uk