Provenance

• Marlborough Gal., London, acquired there in 1977

Literature

• "Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor. With a complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-1996" Dennis Farr & Eva Chadwick, Lypiatt Studio, Stroud (Gloc.), 1997, cf. no. 695B, p. 310 ill.

Lot essay

• The geometry of fear

  
  After serving as a pilot during the Second World War, British draughtsman and architect Lynn Chadwick returned to London with a new artistic spirit. He begins to experiment with small and light sculptures made of materials such as wire, wood and brass. Together with Giacometti, he would eventually become one of the most important sculptors in post-war Europe, finally breaking away from the previous generations' pursuit of romanticism and aesthetics. His archetypal sculptures of people and animals embody the state of disillusionment and existential angst in Europe during the Cold War years.

  What is striking about Chadwick is that he improvises his sculptures. His large-scale, somewhat abstract works in bronze and steel are created without prior sketches or plans. Designing happens while he manipulates his material, he visualises while he works, and he rarely needs to make adjustments afterwards. The result is an oeuvre of figures that seem constructed rather than modelled, linearly bounded in space.

  It reminds him of his training in architecture: "What it taught me was how to compose things, a formal exercise in composition, really, it has nothing to do with the building it represents". Chadwick did not attend art school and had no formal training as a sculptor. By applying his experience as an architectural draughtsman to his sculpture technique, he began to weld in a unique and innovative way. He considered the sculptures thus created to be autonomous, organic forms, more closely linked to nature than to Cold War politics.

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