Born in 1951 in Alta Cruz, Brazil, Saint Clair Cemin lives and works in New York.

Since the 1980s, Saint Clair Cemin has been developing a sculptural body of work that is both eclectic and poetic. Balancing between figuration and abstraction, erudition and playfulness, tradition and experimentation, his work explores the infinite possibilities of form and meaning through a wide variety of materials — bronze, marble, steel, wood, plaster, and glass — which he manipulates with rare virtuosity.

His sources of inspiration are manifold: mythology, philosophy, popular culture and art history. Greek archaism, Surrealism, Art Deco, and industrial modernity coexist in his works, creating visual and mental interferences that blend together without hierarchy and invite both a sensitive and reflective experience.

Saint Clair Cemin deconstructs traditional notions, combining the sublime with the ridiculous, grace with the grotesque, in an ambivalence that gives his sculptures a unique tension. Organic and fluid, yet rigorously constructed, his works never allow themselves to be completely tamed. Combining artisanal precision, noble materials, and diverse references, they oscillate between humor, sensuality, and strangeness.

Based in New York since the late 1970s, Cemin began his career as an engraver before dedicating himself entirely to sculpture. A prominent figure in the East Village art scene of the 1980s, he gradually established himself as a distinctive voice in contemporary sculpture. His monumental works occupy public spaces with iconic pieces such as Vortex (2012) and Awilda (2013), where formal power and symbolic lyricism converge.

Presented at Documenta IX in Kassel in 1992, curated by Jan Hoet, Cemin influenced a new generation of artists, particularly in Brazil, his native country. His work is now part of numerous prestigious collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Eli Broad Family Foundation (Los Angeles), the Emily Fisher Landau Collection (Long Island City), Inhotim (Minas Gerais, Brazil), the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (Paris), the Rooseum (Stockholm), Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgium, among many others.