Milles, Carl

Milles, Carl (mĭl`əs), 1875–1955, Swedish-American sculptor, whose name originally was Carl Emil Wilhelm Anderson. Influenced by Rodin, he studied in Paris from 1897 until 1904, when he returned to Stockholm. In 1929 he visited the United States for the first time and in 1931 began to teach sculpture at Cranbrook Academy, Cranbrook, Mich. His work, at first inspired by Rodin, later became more angular and abstract. Millesgården near Stockholm contains many of his works. He is represented in the United States by the Peace Monument at St. Paul, Minn.; the Fountain of the Meeting of the Waters at St. Louis; a fountain in the Metropolitan Museum; and statues in Rockefeller Center, New York City.

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Milles, Carl 

Born June 23, 1875, in Lagga, near Uppsala; died Sept. 19, 1955, in Stockholm. Swedish sculptor (worked in the US A from 1931).

Milles studied in Paris from 1897 to 1904 and in Munich in 1905 and 1906. From 1920 to 1931 he was a professor at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm. His work was influenced by A. Rodin, and by archaic Greek and medieval sculpture. Shortly before 1920, Milles turned to monumental decorative sculpture, primarily fountains. Attempting to tie in his sculpture with both architecture and the natural setting, he often used ostentatious devices. Milles’ fountains, which are based generally on mythological subjects, are noted for complexity of design, heroic form, and a distinctive picturesque quality created largely by the streams of water (Poseidon, 1930, Goteborg; Orpheus, 1936, Stockholm; Meeting of the Waters, 1940, St. Louis, USA—all in bronze).

REFERENCES

Kravchenko, K. “Karl Milles.” Iskusstvo, 1963, no. 6.
Cornell, H. Carl Milles. Stockholm, 1968.