From Auguste Rodin’s iconic Thinker (1904) to Donatello’s Renaissance David (est. 1438-1442), bronze sculpture has long been a quintessential medium to convey drama and dynamism. Fast-forward to the 20th century, and there is still a plethora of great bronze works to behold: Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse (1910) Louise Bourgeois’ giant Spider (1996), or Giacometti’s spindly stick figures. Today, contemporary artists are reinventing the age-old metal and technique for the present, transforming the legacy of ancient Greek and Roman bronze statuary, in an entirely fresh, global take. On view this year at Art Basel Miami Beach is a trio of artists creating domestically scaled works in bronze that collectors will want to know today.

Jimena Croceri
Piedras Galería (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Designed for the fair’s Positions sector, ‘Impossible Jewel’ features nine sculptures in an amalgam of bronze, aluminum, and copper, with a uniquely ancestral aesthetic. Research for the artwork began in 2018, during Jimena Croceri’s residency at FLORA ars+natura in Bogotá, Colombia, where the artist studied Amerindian Muisca metalwork, an art form from the pre-Columbian civilization. A multidiscipline, conceptual artist based in Argentina, Croceri constructed a 2015 installation of a cardboard box filled with water that gradually deformed over four hours. Her latest work conjures the sensuous ambiguity of corporeal cavities and pre-Columbian ornamental talismans.

Alma Allen
Kasmin (New York City)

Deceptively malleable and seductively poetic, Alma Allen’s abstract sculptures highlight centuries of material history, while taking the art of bronze to new heights. The American-born artist casts his bronzes at his on-site foundry and studio in Tepoztlán, Mexico — painstakingly hand-patinating and polishing them. The result: A visual vocabulary of its own, composed of fossilized, biomorphic forms that resist categorization. Last year, Allen’s solo exhibition ‘Nunca Solo (Never Alone)’ at Museo Anahuacalli in Mexico City featured captivating large-scale bronze and stone artworks throughout the museum and grounds. While sculptures may certainly seem like inert objects, the artist has famously mused: ‘They are not static in my mind. In my mind, they are part of a much larger universe.’

Iván Argote
Albarrán Bourdais (Madrid)

By the fair preview, New Yorkers will have already fallen in love with Colombian, Paris-based artist Iván Argote, whose colossal hyperrealistic aluminum-cast pigeon graces a vaunted art perch — the High Line’s 10th Avenue plinth. Towering 21 feet above the Spur, Dinosaur (2024) reverses the natural order between man and animal, New Yorker and pigeon, evoking the delicate realities of extinction. The 2019 Desert X alum is hardly being cheeky: Where are we exactly on the food chain? Meanwhile, for Art Basel Miami Beach’s Nova sector, Argote presents a genius series of sculptures of different body parts of Roman Emperor Augustus. Continuing his reappropriation of historical figures, Augustus’ anatomy — think hollowed-out torso, pelvis, hands, and legs cast in bronze — are repurposed as flower pots. Another haunting reminder that great civilizations indeed collapse into decay.