Dame Elisabeth Frink, R.A.

Private Collection, U.S.A.
Sale, Sotheby’s London, 4th June 2003, lot 82, where acquired by the present owner

London, Waddington Galleries, Elisabeth Frink, 29th June - 22nd July 1961, cat. no.12 (another cast);
London, Waddington Galleries, Elisabeth Frink, 11th October - 4th November 1972 (un-numbered catalogue, another cast);
Washington, The National Museum for Women in the Arts, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Drawings, 1950-1990, 1990 (un-numbered catalogue, another cast);
Salisbury, Salisbury Library and Galleries, Elisabeth Frink: A Certain Unexpectedness, 10th May - 7th June 1997 (another cast);
London, Beaux Arts, Frink, 7th June - 8th July 2006, illustrated (another cast);
Bournemouth, Bournemouth University, Elisabeth Frink ... this Fleeting World, 8th January - 30th July 2011 (un-numbered catalogue, another cast).

Howard Griffin, 'Elisabeth Frink', Studio, October 1961, pp.131-4, illustrated (another cast);
Brian Connell, 'Capturing the Human Spirit in Big, Bronze Men', The Times, 5th September 1977, p.5, illustrated (another cast);
Brian Robertson (intro.), Elisabeth Frink Sculpture, Harpvale Books, Salisbury, 1984, cat. no.72, illustrated (another cast);
Annette Ratuszniak (ed.), Elisabeth Frink, Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture 1947-93, Lund Humphries in association with the Frink Estate and Beaux Arts, London, 2013, cat. no.FCR89, illustrated (another cast).

Structurally sound. There is very minor dust and surface dirt to the crevices and some tiny flecks of surface matter to the work, including to the underside of the head, only visible upon very close inspection. There is one isolated area of minor oxidisation to the reverse of the flat plane at the base. This excepting the work appears to be in very good condition. Please telephone 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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The theme of human flight is one that has caught the imagination of artists since the age of Leonardo, and was one that was to dominate Frink’s output for much of the early 1960s. Whilst the Icarus-inspired theme of her well-known birdmen continued throughout much of her career, the present piece belongs to a small, succinct body of work produced in the early 1960s, and takes a far darker approach, a comment perhaps on the freshness of war still in many people’s minds. Fascinated by flight from a young age, Sarah Kent recalls Frink’s rather morbid wartime habit watching ‘crippled planes crash down in the field near her home and rush out to claim bits of wreckage’ (Sarah Kent, ‘A Bestiary For Our Time’, Bryan Robertson (intro.), Elisabeth Frink Sculpture, Harpvale Books, Salisbury, 1984, pp.51-68, p.58). Her studio walls featured photographs torn from the pages of Paris Match, showing the famed Frenchman Leo Valentin, who in 1956 had attempted to take flight with wooden wings at an air show in Liverpool, only to plummet to his death. Space travel too was to inspire her, with the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first orbit of the earth in 1961. The theme of flight, not something that most people had ever experienced in 1960, had become to many an emblem for contemporary aspirations. 

After graduating from the Chelsea School of Art in 1953 Frink had become closely associated with the group of young British sculptors later to be known as the Geometry of Fear, and like Lynn Chadwick, Reg Butler and Kenneth Armitage, Frink too sought a means by which to express the post-war angst that gripped Britain. Winning a prize for her entry for the competition to design the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner, Frink turned towards the grotesque and scarred, with her array of dead animals and contorted figures; a regeneration of life growing from the remains of the shattered state that war had left. The present work, Falling Man, develops on from these themes, serving as the culmination of several works developed the previous year, with Fallen Man, Spinning Man and Spinning Man II all presenting the same idea of crashing, free-fall descent. Here the body is charred and blackened, the figure thrown from some imagined fireball and his arm pitifully raised to attempt to break his fall.  As Kent remarks ‘Optimism has gone. In Frink’s work falling has replaced flight as a metaphor appropriate for the likely prospects of humanity’ (ibid).