Robert Holmes

Arabesque (miniature) #3/40

In addition to being one of America’s leading civil engineers, Robert Holmes gained considerable acclaim as a self-taught sculptor. His abstract and contemporary bronzes convey strength, grace, optimism and serenity and are reminiscent of the works of Auguste Rodin, Constantin Brâncuși, Gaston Lachaise and Henry Moore.

Holmes was born in 1927 in Missouri, where he grew up amid the Great Depression. He had an instinctive talent for design and, in his teens, helped his father build houses. Holmes later attended the University of Arizona, earning a degree in civil engineering.

In the early 1950s, Holmes moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he established the Robert Holmes Construction, Design and Development Company. He specialized in designing contemporary homes in the Bay Area before he relocated the business to Arizona in 1958.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Holmes was among Arizona’s most successful luxury home builders. His company also designed and built churches, banks, bridges, apartments and manufacturing plants. 

In 1981, Holmes decided to pursue a second career as a sculptor and sold his business. With his wife, Edith, he moved to the Sea Ranch, a community located north of San Francisco. Over the next several years, Holmes worked with local foundries to create his sculptures but was dissatisfied with the process. In 1989, he formed his own bronze foundry — Bronze Plus — enabling him to oversee all aspects of production and forge relationships with other bronze artists. 

Holmes’s abstract and figurative sculptures garnered attention from art critics and gallery owners across the United States. His semi-abstract and curvilinear works range from table-sized miniatures such as Pas De Tres and Dancers on Toe to large-scale monumental sculptures like The Game and Bull and Ball.

Holmes’s works have been exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe and Asia. His sculptures are in private, corporate and public collections, such as the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, California, and the Hyatt Regency in San Diego. He died in 2016.

On 1stDibs, discover Robert Holmes’s dynamic sculptures.