Carl Milles
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Carl Milles, born Carl Emil Wilhelm Andersson son of lieutenant Emil "Mille" Andersson and his wife Walborg Tisell, (June 23, 1875–September 19, 1955) was a Swedish sculptor, best known for his fountains. He was married to Olga Milles and brother to Ruth Milles.
Carl Milles has sculptured the Poseidon-statue in Gothenburg, the Gustaf Vasa-statue at the Nordiska museet, the Orfeus group outside the Stockholm Concert Hall and the Folke Filbyter-sculpture in Linköping. The latter could be found on a stamp from 1975, celebrating that he would have become a hundred years old that year. Millesgården became his last home and is nowadays a museum.
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[edit] Milles' Career in Paris and Sweden
Milles was born Carl Wilhelm Andersson outside Uppsala in 1875. In 1897 he made what he thought would be a temporary stop in Paris on his way to Chile where he was to manage a school of gymnastics. However, he remained in Paris, where he studied art, working in Auguste Rodin's studio and slowly gaining recognition as a sculptor. In 1904 he and Olga moved to Munich.
Two years later they settled in Sweden, buying property on Herserud Cliff in Lidingö, a large island near Stockholm. Millesgarden was built there between 1906 and 1908 as the sculptor's private residence and workspace. It was turned into a foundation and donated to the Swedish people in 1936, five years after Milles had sailed for America and the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills.
[edit] Milles comes to America
In 1931 American publisher George Gough Booth brought Milles to Cranbrook Educational Community, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan to serve as his sculptor in residence. Part of Booth's arrangement with his principle artists was that they were expected to create major commissions outside the Cranbrook environment. By the time Milles left America for the last time over twenty years later he had dotted the American landscape with his works.
Milles' fountain group "The Wedding of the Waters" in St. Louis, Missouri symbolizes the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers merging just upstream. Commissioned in 1936 and unveiled in May 1940 to a crowd of about 3000 people, the fountain caused a local uproar because of its playful, irreverent, naked, and nearly cartoonish figures, and because Milles had conceived the group as a wedding party with undeniable sexual overtones. Local officials insisted that the name be changed to "The Meeting of the Waters".
[edit] Milles' final resting place
Milles and his wife returned to Sweden in 1951, and lived in Millesgården every summer until Milles's death in 1955. They spent winters in Rome, where the American Academy had supplied them with a studio. Milles and his wife, Olga, who died in 1967 in Graz, Austria, are buried in a small stone chapel, designed by Milles, at Millesgården. Because Swedish law requires burial on sacred ground, it took the assistance of the then reigning Gustaf VI Adolf to allow this resting place. The king, a friend of Milles's and a keen gardener, had helped plant a garden at the site.
[edit] Selected American works
- WWJ Building, Albert Kahn architect, Detroit, Michigan 1936
- Monument for Peace, City Hall/Ramsey County Court House, Holabird & Root architects, Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1936
- Racine County Court House, Holabird & Root architects, Racine, Wisconsin 1931
- Doors of Finance Building, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1938
- Meeting of the Waters, St. Louis, Missouri 1936 – 1940
- On a Sunday Morning, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1941
- Numerous works at Cranbrook Educational Community, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, including Mermaids & Tritons Fountain, 1930, Sven Hedin on a Camel, 1932, Jonah and the Whale Fountain, 1932, Orpheus Fountain, 1936,
- Fountain of Faith, Falls Church, Virginia 1952
- Spirit of Transportation, Detroit Civic Center, Detroit, Michigan 1952
- Volker Memorial Fountain, Kansas City, Missouri 1955
- Triton Blowing on a Shell, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
- Pegasus and Man, Bryan St. @ Harwood St., Dallas, TX
[edit] Photo gallery
 Folke Filbyter searching for his lost grandson, statue by Carl Milles at Stora Torget, Linköping |
[edit] Sources and references
- Kvaran, Einar E., An Annoted Inventory of Outdoor Sculpture in Washtenaw County, Masters Thesis 1989
- Liden, Elisabeth, Between Water and Heaven, Carl Milles Search for American Commissions, Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm, Sweden 1986
- Martenson, Gunilla, "A Stockholm Sculpture Garden," New York Times, Dec.27,1987.
- Nawrocki, Dennis and Thomas Holleman, Art in Detroit Public Places, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 1980
- Piland & Uguccioni, Fountains of Kansas City, City of Fountains Foundation 1985
- Rogers, Meyric, Carl Milles, An Interpretation of His Work, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut 1940
- Taylor, Askew, Croze, et al, Milles At Cranbrook, Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1961
- Westbrook, Adele and Anne Yarowsky, Design in America, The Cranbrook Vision 1925 – 1950, Detroit Institute
