- 327
Bernard Meadows
Description
- Bernard Meadows
- Armed Bust 4
- bronze with a mid-brown patina on a cement base
- height 22in. (including base)
Exhibited
London, Gimpel Fils, Bernard Meadows: Recent Sculpture, February – March 1963, no.6, illustrated in the catalogue (another cast);
XXXII Venice Biennale, British Pavilion, Roger Hilton, Gwyther Irwin, Bernard Meadows, Joe Tilson, 1964, no.60, illustrated in the catalogue (another cast), and tour to Zagreb, Berlin, Recklinghausen, Braunschweig and Amsterdam.
Literature
Alan Bowness, Bernard Meadows – Sculpture and Drawings, HMF/Lund Humphries, London 1995, BM92, pl. 119 (another cast).
Catalogue Note
Conceived in 1953 and cast in an edition of five.
The early titling of this piece seems to have moved between the current title, under which the sculpture was exhibited at Gimpel Fils in 1963, and Brutus II, under which it was exhibited in Meadows’1964 Venice Biennale show and subsequent tour.
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.