Idel Ianchelevici

Idel Ianchelevici (Leova, now Moldova, 1909 – Maisons-Laffitte, France, 1994) was a sculptor and draughtsman of Jewish background, born in Bessarabia when it was part of the Russian Empire, who built most of his career in Belgium. His large-scale works, with their simplified forms, place him among the figurative sculptors of mid-twentieth-century Europe.

In 1928 he moved to Liège, where he enrolled at the Académie des Beaux-Arts de la Ville and won first prize for statuary in 1933. That same year he settled in Brussels, where he helped design the Romanian pavilion for the 1935 Brussels International Exhibition and held exhibitions in a number of cities in Europe and beyond.

His sculpture is rooted in the celebration of humanity at the height of its powers. Works such as L'Appel (1939), Conspiration (1932) and the National Monument to the Political Prisoner at Breendonk (1954) show expressive, powerful figures. From 1945 he worked in marble and stone, materials that demand simplified form, and his figures grew longer and more supple while their faces became more schematic. Drawing remained constant throughout his life, and his drawings are not always preparatory sketches for his sculptures.