Michel Anthony was born in Perak, Malaysia. He lives and works in Nice. He has devoted himself entirely to sculpture since 2003. Coming from this distant country, Michel Anthony has anchored himself in the heart of Nice for a few years for emotional reasons.
He splits his time between his tiny workshop in Vieux-Nice, in this unusually old city, and his other home base, the beautiful and mysterious Tuscany, where he creates his sculptures at the famous “Fonderia d’Arte” Massimo Del Chiaro in Pietrasanta, in the good company of some giants of art: Giuseppe Penone, Fernando Botero, Igor Mitoraj…
Modest, elegant, Anthony Michel deserves significant recognition for his work. A self-taught citizen of the world, Michel Anthony sums up his personal and coherent artistic project in a few words: “From my experiences in fashion, I kept the taste for dressing, the taste for coordinating colors. My sculptures give form to emptiness. I make a sketch in pencil on paper, then I paint it on canvas, and from there, I make the plaster model. The technique is traditional, that of lost wax.”
However, nothing predestined this navigator to a life as an artist…
From the age of 8, Michel Anthony harvested rubber in the rubber fields of Malaysia. From a modest family, he led a difficult life with small jobs… his ambitions quickly pushed him to leave Malaysia, heading to the southern seas of the Indian Ocean, the Strait of Oman.
Having become a professional skipper, he manages a big game fishing agency in Ceylon: blue marlin, yellowfin tuna, hammerhead shark. He would later rediscover these colors a few years later in Milan, with Ken Scott, an American painter turned fashion designer who would revolutionize Italian fashion in the 1980s.
Michel Anthony, his first assistant, mixed colors by hand, designed fabrics that dressed prestigious clients like Brigitte Bardot or Jackie Kennedy… all while attending classes at the Fine Arts School of Brera and the Applied Arts School “del Castello.”
It is from this period that his first paintings date, abstractions in which he continues to arrange colors and geometric shapes today.
To devote himself entirely to sculpture, Michel Anthony decided to leave Milan and settle in Nice, where he met his future wife, who unfortunately left him alone a few years later due to illness.
Bronze sculpture not only requires artistic qualities but also flawless execution. After some unsatisfactory local experiences, Michel Anthony decided to find a foundry that met his expectations and technical requirements.
In Italy, in Pietrasanta near Carrara, there is indeed the famous foundry Massimo Del Chairo, where the bronze, its polishing, and its patina have a quality unmatched elsewhere.
His first sculpture won the First Prize Prestige of Europe, in Nice in 2005. Other awards followed, like the Jury Prize for Sculpture, Aigle de Nice.
In his workshop in Vieux Nice, Michel Anthony continues to create and honor both institutional and private commissions, from Malaysia, Japan, or Italy.
