Lorenzo Quinn

Lorenzo Quinn is a contemporary Italian sculptor whose giant human hands have become some of the most photographed public artworks of the past decade. His Venice installations Support (2017), two hands rising from the Grand Canal to prop up a palazzo, and Building Bridges (2019), six pairs of hands arching over the Arsenale basin, made him internationally known.

Life

Quinn was born in Rome on 7 May 1966, a son of the Mexican-American actor Anthony Quinn. He grew up in the United States and Italy, studied at the American Academy of Fine Arts in New York in the early 1980s, initially as a painter, and moved to Spain in 1988. He lives in Barcelona.

In the late 1980s he acted, playing the young Antonio Stradivari opposite his father in Stradivari (1988) and Salvador Dalí in the film Dalí. In the early 2000s he gave up acting for sculpture.

Hands as a language

The hand is Quinn's central motif: a symbol of creation, help, love and destruction. Give and Take III stood in London's Berkeley Square in 2009–10, and his Forces of Nature series has been shown in Europe, the United States, Asia and the Gulf. In 2021 Together, two wire-mesh hands, was installed in front of the Pyramids of Giza.

The Venice works

Support was unveiled in May 2017 during the Venice Biennale at the Ca' Sagredo Hotel, a warning about rising seas and climate change. Building Bridges followed in 2019: six pairs of white hands, 15 meters high, each standing for a value: friendship, faith, help, love, hope and wisdom. Both were temporary. In 2024 he showed Souls of Venice, mesh figures of Venetian historical personalities, at Ca' Rezzonico.

Where to see his work

Permanent works include Encounters in Palma de Mallorca (2003) and Tree of Life in Birmingham (2005). For more large-scale public art, see famous sculptures.