Anita Mandl

Anita Mandl (1926-2022) was born in Prague, before coming to England in 1939. She trained as a zoologist, graduating from Birkbeck College, University of London, with first class honours in 1947, before joining the Medical School, University of Birmingham, during which she studied sculpture at the Birmingham College of Art. Her early career as a research scientist inevitably informed the accuracy and intimate knowledge required to simplify her subject and instinctively capture the essence of her chosen animals.

Mandl is first and foremost a carver, taking cut cubes or lumps of rough stone as her point of departure. Sometimes the grain of the stone refines Mandl’s choice of creature, posture or position; which are then formed through hard manual labour. These carvings are cast into editions of bronze and silver, where the patina often retains the finish of the original. Through this process and her deep knowledge of animal anatomy and behaviour, Mandl skilfully pares down their characteristics to convey the very nature of a species. Their economy of language, their smooth and lustrous surfaces, together express the essential characteristics of each animal.

Mandl has exhibited widely across the United Kingdom, as well as internationally, notably as part of Czech and Slovak Sculpture in Great Britain at the Czechoslovak Embassy in 1992. In 1978 she became a member of the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol; and in 1980 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors. Her work is represented in public collections across the UK, including the RWA, Bristol; University of Birmingham; and the Zoological Society of London, where her Young Hippo sculpture is awarded to the winner of the ZSL’s annual Stamford Raffles Award.