Harold Ambellan (1912 - 2006)

Harold Ambellan

Harold Ambellan is an American painter and sculptor.

He studied sculpture and fine art in Buffalo before moving to New York City. The human figure is central to Harold Ambellan's work. He created monumental figures and drew extensively, leaving thousands of drawings. Ambellan was one of the participants in Roosevelt's Federal Art Project, which hired hundreds of artists during the Great Depression who collectively created more than 100,000 paintings and over 18,000 sculptures.

Ambellan remained committed to figuration in both his sculpture and painting. He was elected president of the Sculptors Guild of America in 1941, and that same year his work was exhibited in group shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

In 1944, Ambellan participated in the liberation of Normandy as part of the U.S. Navy, then taught three-dimensional art at the Workshop School in New York City. In 1954, for political reasons, Ambellan moved to France and remained there for the rest of his life, working and exhibiting throughout Europe.