Photo credit: Naomiki Sato
I was both sad and delighted to read this obituary of Eric Joisel, a legendary French origami artist. Sad of course because I’m only finding out about his work now, but delighted to see such amazing creations! He started his career as a sculptor, but threw away all his previous work once he discovered origami. Each piece is made from a single sheet of paper with no cuts. From the article:
To devise the blueprint for a single figure could take him years. To fold one could take hundreds of hours — a very large work might entail a rectangle of paper measuring more than 15 feet by 25 feet, roughly the size of a New York studio apartment. No two figures were precisely alike.
“Origami is very difficult,” Mr. Joisel wrote in English in an introductory passage on his Web site. “When people ask how long it takes me to make a sculpture I say ’35 years,’ because that is how long it’s taken me to get to this level.”
Be sure to check out the New York Times article about Joisel; not only is there a slideshow of Joisel’s stunning work, but you can download a pdf of instructions for one of his simpler creations.
16 thoughts on “Eric Joisel’s Origami”
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Here’s another nice article. He was in a PBS movie about origami recently. Mindblowing stuff.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/2010/10/the-loss-of-an-artist-vanessa-gould-on-eric-joisel.html
I loved the PBS movie. We watched it on Netflix. Great show and he was very talented, based on the movie it seems that all the artists in the origami realm will miss him. Thanks for sharing the sad news.
[…] Rhinoceros Origami by Eric Joisel. Originally trained as a sculptor, Mr. Joisel was a self-taught origami artist. His work resembles that of no other artist in the genre. This giant folded rhinoceros is made from a single sheet of paper with no cuts. […]
[…] Rhinoceros Origami by Eric Joisel. Originally trained as a sculptor, Mr. Joisel was a self-taught origami artist. His work resembles that of no other artist in the genre. This giant folded rhinoceros is made from a single sheet of paper with no cuts. […]
[…] Rhinoceros Origami by Eric Joisel. Originally trained as a sculptor, Mr. Joisel was a self-taught origami artist. His work resembles that of no other artist in the genre. This giant folded rhinoceros is made from a single sheet of paper with no cuts. […]
[…] 3. Rhinoceros Origami by Eric Joisel […]
[…] Rhinoceros Origami by Eric Joisel. Originally trained as a sculptor, Mr. Joisel was a self-taught origami artist. His work resembles that of no other artist in the genre. This giant folded rhinoceros is made from a single sheet of paper with no cuts. […]
[…] Rhinoceros Origami por Eric Joisel . Originalmente treinado como um escultor, Mr. Joisel era um artista autodidata origami. Seu trabalho se assemelha ao de nenhum outro artista do gênero. Este gigante rinoceronte dobradas é feito de uma única folha de papel, sem cortes. […]