Lynn Chadwick, R.A.

Acquired directly from the Artist by the present owner

Vienna, Wiener Secession, Ivon Hitchens, Lynn Chadwick, November 1956, cat. no.20 (as Beast VIII), (another cast), produced with the British Council for the Venice Biennale.

Dennis Farr, Lynn Chadwick, Tate Publishing, London, 2003, pp.45-47 (another cast);
Dennis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculpture with Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, cat. no.198, illustrated p.136 (another cast).

The sculpture is stable. There is some minor surface dirt in the pitted areas of the work and some light rubbing at the extreme edges. With the exception of the above the work appears to be in excellent condition. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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‘Art must be the manifestation of some vital force coming from the dark, caught by the imagination and translated by the artist’s ability and skill … Whatever the final shape, the force behind is … indivisible. When we philosophise upon this force we lose sight of it. The intellect alone is too clumsy to grasp it.’ (Lynn Chadwick, The Listener, 21st October 1954)

Chadwick first struck upon the beast as a subject in 1955, and it was to become a theme to which he frequently returned, inspiring some of his best work. It may be significant that earlier in the year he visited Mykonos and Delos and saw the ancient remains of the famous avenue of lions at Delos, that have been dated to the second quarter of the sixth century B.C. He greatly admired these ancient sculptures with their menacing posture and weathered forms and they may have been a catalyst for his preoccupation with the subject (Dennis Farr, Lynn Chadwick, Tate Publishing, London, 2003, pp.51-52). The beast allowed Chadwick to create a sculptural metaphor for the essence of animality without ensnaring him in the representational or illusionistic. Superficially an abstraction, these works do not represent a particular kind of beast; instead they pulsate with a mysterious animal vigour.

As with most of Chadwick’s works of the 1950s, Beast VII speaks in the vocabulary of the ‘geometry of fear’. This term was coined four years before by the poet and art critic Herbert Read. He used the phrase in a review of the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The British contribution was an exhibition of the work of the group of young sculptors that had emerged immediately after the Second World War in the wake of the older Henry Moore. Their work was characterised by spiky, alien-looking twisted and tortured figures. These were executed in pitted bronze or welded metal and vividly expressed a range of states of mind and emotions related to the anxieties and fears of the post-war period. The artists were Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Geoffrey Clarke, Bernard Meadows, Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull and of course Lynn Chadwick. Of their work Read wrote: ‘These new images belong to the iconography of despair, or of defiance; and the more innocent the artist, the more effectively he transmits the collective guilt. Here are images of flight, or ragged claws "scuttling across the floors of silent seas", of excoriated flesh, frustrated sex, the geometry of fear' (Herbert Read, ‘New Aspects of British Sculpture’, The XXVI Venice Biennale: The British Pavilion, 1952).

Beast VII of 1956 is a superb lithe creature with an alert, anxious, and threatening presence. Its surface is shattered, like a broken pane of glass. The sharp angles of its form are led by the long line that runs through the tail, back and head. This dominating diagonal contrasts with the delicate tracery that crosses the rest of the body. Chadwick did not go to art school and had no formal training as a sculptor. Instead he transferred his experience as an architectural draughtsman to his sculptural technique. He built his sculptures using geometric space frames, welding metal strips together to create an armature, which he referred to as 'drawings in steel rods' (Lynn Chadwick quoted in Michael Bird, Lynn Chadwick, Lund Humphries, London, p.28). On to these structures Chadwick applied Stolit, an immensely strong artificial stone, made of a paste of gypsum and powdered iron which sets hard and could then be filed and chiselled. By hatching and carving the surfaces of his sculptures, Chadwick made them vital and alive. However, the armature, even after filling-in, is never disguised, but becomes an essential part of the surface, evoking tensions of muscle, skin and bone. This method of composition played on the expressive potential of the framework or skeleton of his subject.  A polished rib catches the light, drawing the eye quickly about the body in the direction lines of the armature that show underneath the skin, creating a tense dynamism. In the later part of the decade, Chadwick began very successfully to cast these works in bronze. This was a more durable material than iron and composition and one which allowed the production of several casts of each sculpture.  Its sleeker surface also better complemented the angular form of the works.