International Sculpture Symposium

The International Sculpture Symposium movement was spearheaded by Karl Prantl in Austria in 1959. This initiative grew from the need to facilitate communication and exchange between members of the international sculpture community. It was also rooted in Cold War tensions, which lent a particular urgency to the need for cross-cultural dialogue on a person-to-person basis. The first international sculpture symposium took place in an abandoned stone quarry in Sankt Margarethen im Burgenland.

Sculptors from around the world joined together to produce a permanent public artwork from local stone, a dynamic which would provide the model for many symposia to follow.

Since then international sculpture symposia have been held in numerous towns and cities around the world, including Lindabrunn, Austria and Hagi, Japan (a town known for its pottery) and in Scotland (Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Lumsden and other locations).

The first international sculpture symposia in the United States (and the first on a college campus) was in 1965 on the California State University, Long Beach campus in Long Beach, California.

The first International Sculpture Symposium (Vermont International Sculpture Symposium) in the United States was held in Proctor, Vermont in 1968 under the joint sponsorship of Vermont Marble Company, National Endowment for the Arts, and Vermont Council on the Arts. Participating sculptors were from the United States, Austria, Japan, Germany, and Yugoslavia.[1]

The first Sculpture Symposium in Australia was held at Wondabyne near Gosford in New South Wales in 1986. It was followed by the Barossa International Sculpture Symposium in Mengler Hill near Tanunda in the Barossa in South Australia in 1988. Nine sculptures in Marble and Granite were carved by sculptors from France, the United States, Japan and Australia. The site is now the Barossa Sculpture Park.

As part of the program in 2001, the Republic of South Africa War Memorial Reconciliation by sculptor Strijdom van der Merwe was created for the sculpture park at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan, South Korea.[2]

The Scottish Sculpture Workshop organised a series of international symposia through the 1980s and 1990s, mostly focused on stone carving. These attracted artists from across Europe, North America and Japan. Some were linked to the Scottish Sculpture Open exhibition.

1997 International Granite Symposium[3]

1995 International Granite Symposium. Participants included Horace L Farlowe, Bjorn Fjellstrom, Kenichi Mashita, Agneta Stening.[4][5]

1992 European Sculpture Symposium[3]

1991 Sculpture Symposium. Participants include Tim Shutter, [6]

1986 International Sculpture Symposium. Participants include Hironori Katagiri, Kate Thomson, [7]

1984 International Granite Carving Symposium. Participants include Yoshio Yagi, [8]

Other Sculpture Symposia in Scotland include:

2010 Big Art for Kirkcudbright. Participants included Marina Weir, Tom Allan, Mike Cairncross, Nils Hansen, Andy Breen, Peter Dowden and Dmitri Broe.[9]

1996 Bon'ness International Sculpture Symposium. Participants include Hironori Katagiri, [7]