Bernard Meadows b. 1915

Conceived in 1961 and cast in an edition of six, there is another cast in the collection of the Arts Council of Great Britain.

Armed Bust I and Armed Bust II: Brutus of 1961 mark a notable change in the direction of Meadows’ sculpture, with the emphasis moving away from the animal-derived pieces of the 1950s towards a more human vocabulary.

After a visit to Florence in 1960, Meadows had been much influenced by the bellicose manner of the renaissance figure sculpture in the city, and particularly Michelangelo’s Brutus in the Bargello, with which the present sculpture is clearly linked. These strong armoured figures were a symbol of power and Meadows brought this sense of threat into the sculptures that he was to produce over the next four years.

The squeezed polished forms that start to appear in Meadows’ sculpture also date from this period, with Armed Bust II: Brutus being the first example. These forms, which Bowness calls ‘ocular forms’, relate to the direct gaze with which many of the renaissance sculptures capture the viewer and the polishing serves to draw the eye of the viewer to these central elements of the sculpture.