Mitzi Cunliffe – Owen’s Park Manchester

Mitzi Solomon Cunliffe January 1st 1918  December 30th 2006

American born, resident of Didsbury Manchester, sculptor and designer, responsible for, amongst other things, the BAFTA mask.

Mitzi_Cunliffe_Design

Her first large scale commission was two pieces for the Festival of Britain in 1951. One, known as Root Bodied Forth, shows figures emerging from a tree, and was displayed at the entrance of the Festival. The second, a pair of bronze handles in the form of hands, adorned the Regatta Restaurant. She created a similar piece, in the form of knots, in 1952 which remains at the School of Civic Design at Liverpool University, along with The Quickening in the rear courtyard.

p1090554

p1090555-copy

Cunliffe developed a technique for mass-producing abstract designs in relief in concrete, as architectural decoration, which she described as sculpture by the yard. She used the technique to decorate buildings throughout the UK, but particularly in and around Manchester.

d9d483ddd467272577443b6391e5a66a

Particularly this example of four modular panels named Cosmos, set in the wall of the student halls of residence in Owens Park, Fallowfield, Manchester.

P1270299

P1270300

P1270302

P1270303

P1270304

P1270306

P1270307

P1270308

P1270309

P1270310

P1270311

P1270312

P1270313

P1270314

P1270315

P1270316

P1270317

P1270318

P1270321

P1270322

P1270323

P1270324

P1270325

 

4 thoughts on “Mitzi Cunliffe – Owen’s Park Manchester

  1. Mitzi Cunliffe was commissioned by Manchester Education Committee in 1957, to sculpt a statue for my old high school, the then new Wythenshawe Technical High School. The statue was named ‘Man & Technic’ and still stands on the site, now in pride of place, in the grounds of the new school Manchester Health Academy in Wythenshawe.

    Like

  2. Pingback: MITZI to UMIST

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s