The creator of the 60-foot-long bronze sculpture is World War I Memorial We are soldiers of peace in Washington DC.
“No one hates war as much as I do,” says the sculptor. Sabine Howardwho released his contemporary masterpiece earlier this month, said: “The people caught in the crossfire of war are innocent bystanders. They are people who lose their homes, their families, their mothers and children, and it's not like, 'Well, we're going to rebuild your life.'
Howard describes the monumental sculpture, featuring 38 figures, as a “movie in bronze.” The memorial marks the completion of the World War I Memorial near the White House, which opened in 2021, more than a century after the last gun was fired. In contrast, Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial was erected just seven years after the end of the Vietnam War.
To honor the 4.7 million Americans who served in the U.S. military during World War I, a federal commission held a design competition that drew 360 submissions. Howard, a contemporary classical sculptor who grew up in New York and Turin, Italy, and has lived in Venezuela, Portugal and the United Kingdom, won in 2016.
Howard says he wanted to serve America because of the opportunities it has given him. “I love my country and I believe in the possibilities. I couldn't draw when I was 19 and started from scratch. I threw myself into it and Drawing with the right side of the brain I started practicing on the first day and asked if I could come back and enroll in art school after 90 days, and they said yes!
“It was like an adventure that I started, and it gave me purpose. I have the American dream, the possibility. This would not have been possible in Europe, and especially in Italy, I believe so strongly. It can only be achieved here.”
Howard never intended to glorify war, and at 61, he belongs to a generation with very different views.
“I grew up going to a lot of anti-Vietnam War protests and saw the horrors of war because there were a lot of returning addicts in the area where I grew up,” he says. “There was a median strip on Broadway in Manhattan that I would cross and there would be addicts lying there with needles. It was a nightmare for a little kid to see that, and it's stayed with me.”
Howard's $8 million, 25-ton sculpture is set on pink granite and is titled “A Soldier's Journey.” It follows the day an unnamed soldier takes his helmet from his daughter's hands and heads off to battle. It depicts the horrors of war as soldiers fight and nurses tend to their wounds. A man looms towards the viewer in shell shock. It ends with a homecoming scene in which the soldier hands his helmet to his daughter, a foreshadowing of World War II.
Howard was conscious that this was a public art piece aimed at mass support: “How many people go to museums? Maybe 5%, 10%? So I had better do something that excites them. My first thought was, what is the most interesting art form today for the general public, and that's film. Now I have to make a film in bronze, so I work from left to right. The scene unfolds.
“You're an active participant and you can really get emotionally involved that way, and it develops as a cathartic and community. You can share what you've learned in the studio with visitors. I love that, because now I'm not just making art for myself in the studio, I'm working for a cause. It's not self-centered anymore. It's for other people.”
A Soldier's Journey depicts the sculptor's elaborate journey, with a crucial detour to England. Howard spent nine months devising the 25 different iterations, taking more than 12,000 photographs of models dressed in actual military uniforms in his studio in New York's South Bronx.
He initially used college students and Broadway actors as models, but once he got in the studio and began sculpting, he realized they lacked the dignity he needed, so he turned to actual veterans — Navy Seals, Marines and Army Rangers — and hired one of them full time.
“This gave it a more historical reference,” Howard recalls. “We were able to carve out the PTSD that they really went through in their faces, and the bronze statues carry that history and overcome death. This is an important aspect here, because we've created something very human and emotive.”
“Movement is emotion. If you look at the reliefs, they're like a symphony, first quiet, then screaming very loudly, then quiet, then moving again, then quiet again. All these crescendos and diminuendos are ways of making sculpture, and they go back to the whole idea of Renaissance art, which is very unified and cohesive.”
While sculpting with clay, Howard traveled across the US looking for a foundry to bring his grand vision to life, but the systems were too restrictive. Then one night, on Instagram, he came across a product called Indomitable. Nick Bibby, British sculptorHoward got in touch and found out about the Pangolin Foundry in Stroud, Gloucestershire.
“I flew there, walked in and immediately knew it was the right place. The aesthetics, the craftsmanship, the creativity, the problem-solving skills and the team of 200 people – those are what you need for a project of this size. All 200 people worked on this project.”
“The community here has a close relationship with the foundry because that's where they find work. It's great. There's a real human being making the art. It's not a computer. You can see my fingerprints on the metal. My fingerprints are literally on the metal. The quality of the casting is excellent.”
The First World War killed twice as many Americans as the Vietnam War and inspired the civil rights movement, the women's suffrage movement and America's emergence as a superpower, but unlike the fanfare of commemoration in Britain, the centenary of America's entry into the war in 1917 passed largely unnoticed. The Second World War looms much larger in the national consciousness.
Howard reflected, “It's important that we look more at history and learn more about what we've been through so that we don't repeat the same mistakes. When we look back to World War I and this moment 106 years ago, it feels like we've just opened the box into never-ending war.”
“The war to end all wars was the war that actually opened the gates. So the helmets are down at the start and open at the end because it's a Pandora's box that's been unleashed upon us. It's deplorable that it's heading in that direction.”
He asks: “Are we sleepwalking into World War III and now we're opening this sculpture? When those soldiers come back they'll see themselves in it, just as the soldiers who fought 100 years ago did. It's a war memorial, but ultimately it's a memorial to humanity and mankind.”
