LYNN CHADWICK

Chadwick was part of a generation of British sculptors who surprised audiences at the 1952 Venice Biennale by breaking with the tradition of carving sculpture from wood or stone. Instead, he welded iron and bronze rods into expressionistic, figurative works inspired by the human form and animals that hovered close to abstraction. He rejected what he saw as the amorphousness of stone, preferring to work with iron because it allowed him to “do a three dimensional drawing...which has a very definite shape.”

The works presented in ‘Lynn Chadwick: It All Started in Venice...’ offer a broad stylistic base and general appeal; chosen specifically to highlight not only the depth but also the breadth of Chadwick’s groundbreaking body of work. Whilst works such as ‘Winged Girl I’ (1971) shows the carefully considered ‘attitude’ so typical of Chadwick’s works created during the 1970s, the stance, texture and finish of, for example, ‘Little Girl III’ (1987) helps to visualise the calmness and sense of serenity that is so often found in Chadwick’s mid and late career works.

Chadwick first came to international prominence in 1952 when he was included in the British Council’s New Aspects of British Sculpture exhibition for the XXVI Venice Biennale alongside Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Bernard Meadows, Geoffrey Clarke, Robert Adam, William Turnbull and Eduardo Paolozzi. In 1953 he was one of the twelve semi-finalists for the Unknown Political Prisoner International Sculpture Competition and went on to win the International Prize for sculpture at the 1956 Venice Biennale (beating the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti). In 1964 he was awarded a CBE and was elected a Royal Academician in 2001. A major retrospective of his work was held at Tate Britain, London in 2003. His work is widely collected both privately and by major institutions globally.

In 1985 Chadwick helped to establish the foundry Pangolin Editions (Gloucestershire, UK) with which he used to cast his body of work. Later, the foundry cast and fabricated sculpture for YBAs Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas, amongst others.