Carl Wilhelms | 1889 - 1953
Carl Wilhelm Wilhelms, before 1920 Svensson, born October 20, 1889 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, died August 16, 1953 in Helsinki, was a Finnish sculptor. Wilhelms had originally intended to work with furniture and carpets, and he only began his career as a sculptor at the age of 31. For several years he made a living as an ornamental sculptor before breaking through as a sculptor. He worked mostly in small format and in a powerful summary style. Wilhelms studied 1912–1913 at the Möller-Jensen school in Copenhagen and learned woodcarving at the Viborg Art School 1915–1917 and had a shop for arts and crafts in Helsinki in 1919.
After a trip to Germany and Italy, he went to Paris and studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under the direction of Antoine Bourdelle 1920–1921. In the 1920s and 1930s Wilhelms participated in many sculpture competitions in Finland and by the end of the 1940s his small-scale sculptures had also become very highly regarded.
