Having worked as a sculptor for the majority of his adult life, Hugo Powell made an enormous range of work, from architectural commissions to small assemblages. Here you will find a relatively small selection of his works categorised by medium, with a special section for the series of Phoenixes that were the sculptor’s main focus towards the end of his life. During Powell’s last year, he personally selected most of these works for inclusion on this website, mainly choosing sculpture from the later part of his career.
‘Hugo Powell combined an analytical approach to object making with a real feeling for the poetry of form. His abstract wood sculptures are feats of technical virtuosity, developed across four decades of studio practice. Whilst his earlier carvings are elegant, interlocking structures, transferred ingeniously from plan to block, his later works are more complex and fluid, with forms that seem to emerge from but ultimately transform the organic material.’ Sophie Raikes, Curator, Henry Moore Institute