Notes

The present lot is reminiscent of the large scale abstract bronze sculptures titled The Watchers commissioned in 1961.

Lynn Chadwick’s abstracted standing or sitting human forms in bronze or welded steel, with bulky draped bodies and stick-like limbs, are immediately recognisable. The artist works with the tensions set up by contrasts between dark and light, rough and smooth, solid and insubstantial, organic and geometric and matt and polished, and he succeeds equally well at all scales from table-top-sized works to monumental, larger-than-life figures that dominate the landscape. He builds a space frame that is filled in with plaster compound and then cast, so his sculptures invariably appear constructed rather than carved or modelled. Chadwick bought the Tudor manor house Lypiatt Park (Gloucestershire, UK) in 1958 and slowly renovated and restored it until his death in 2003. Many of his large-scale sculptures have been installed there in the grounds.