Lynn Chadwick, R.A.

Saidenberg Gallery, New York, where purchased by the present owner in 1957

New York, Saidenberg Gallery, Lynn Chadwick, 8th April - 6th May 1957, cat. no.12.

Dennis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculptor, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2006, cat. no.223, pp.128-9, sketch illustrated.

Structurally sound, the work appears in excellent, original overall condition. There is very minor surface dirt and dust to the work, most visible to the crevices. There are some spaces to the artist's application of stolit, most visible to the deep crevices of the figure's, but these are in keeping with the artist's technique and material. There are some extremely minor signs of very slight cracking to the body of the base immediately surrounding the legs, but again, this appears in keeping with the nature of the material, and does not detract from the overall appearance of the work. Elsewhere the body appears structurally sound and in extremely good overall condition, with a surface and texture inherent to the nature of the materials and technique. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Throughout 1957 and into 1958, Chadwick was working on a number of sculptures that treated the subject of pairs of dancers. Clearly intrigued by the questions of balance, movement and timing that this offered, he also managed to create a body of work that chimes in close harmony with the culture of the time.

The ‘trad jazz’ revival in Britain in the fifties was a significant element in the embryonic youth culture that was developing, and in pubs and clubs across the country here was a chance to gather and dance. Bands such as those run by Humphrey Lyttleton, Ken Collyer, Chris Barber, George Chisholm and Acker Bilk became real stars, packing the fans into venues of all types. Like rock'n'roll in America, the music looked back to Black America of the interwar years, with Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Sidney Bechet and others being held up as inspiration, and indeed elements of trad influenced the early days of British rock and blues, with Lonnie Donegan and Alexis Korner both graduating from trad outfits, and indeed many of the later major bands incorporated elements of Dixieland influence in their music.

As a representative element of British youth culture, the trad scene offered something different from your parents’ world, a prime requisite of any successful underground movement, and was very much tied to the left-leaning political world of 'The Angry Young Men'. In John Osborne’s Look Back In Anger, that lodestone of the age, Jimmy Porter totes a trumpet; film of the Aldermaston marches shows the jazz players gamely keeping the New Orleans sound going for mile after mile along the roads, and, in perhaps one of the best insights into this particular milieu, Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson’s pioneering Free Cinema short, Momma Don’t Allow, the feeling of a genuine underground is very strong. By the conservative standards of late 50s Britain, possession of suede shoes, a duffle coat and a New Statesman marked one out as a dangerous radical.

It is this sense of the new, of the vigour and release that the dancers are experiencing, that Chadwick looks to capture, and he succeeds. Reducing his figures to blocks and planes, he is able to imbue them with not just a sense of movement, but of a beat, marking for us that point where they spin apart, ready to move back together. In Dance XI we can even see how one figure leans slightly back, to counter the weight of their partner as they twist away from each other.

Dance XI was included in Chadwick’s first US exhibition after his 1956 Venice Biennale triumph, held at the Saidenberg Gallery in New York and where it was acquired by the present owners. It has been unexhibited and unpublished since then.