The late British artist Lynn Chadwick is having a moment. The 20th-century sculptor, known for his bronze and steel sculptures melding animal and human forms, is the subject of a major retrospective opening at 18th-century Houghton Hall in Norfolk (2 May-4 October). One of his large-scale sculptures, meanwhile, is due to be among the leading lots at Christie’s London’s Modern British and Irish Art evening sale next week (18 March).
The Houghton exhibition, held across the house and grounds, will feature 30 works dating from the 1950s to the 1990s. They will include kinetic sculptures, key pieces featured include Beast VII (1956) and Back to Venice (Male), 1988, as well as a selection of Chadwick’s best-known paired figures, known as “couples”—such as Jubilee IV (1985).
Lynn Chadwick, Jubilee IV (1985)
Courtesy of the artist’s estate/Pangolin London. Photo: Steve Russell Studios.
All of the works in the show, which is organised and backed by the London-based gallery Pangolin, come from the artist’s estate including three works that have been on loan for the past eight years to the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich.
The estate of Chadwick, which promotes his legacy and output, is based in Gloucestershire, UK, where the artist lived and worked for over 50 years. It holds a collection of original works alongside extensive archival material.
Chadwick trained as an architectural draughtsman then, after serving in the Second World War, began designing trade fairs stands. While doing so he began experimenting with mobiles—a form of kinetic sculpture. He was given his first solo exhibition at Gimpel Fils gallery in London in 1950.
Houghton Hall
Photo: Pete Huggins
In 1956, Chadwick represented Britain at the Venice Biennale alongside the painter Ivon Hitchens. Chadwick presented a series of angular anthropomorphic sculptures made by welding together frames of iron rods which he filled with the industrial compound Stolit. In 1958 he bought the country estate Lypiatt Park in Gloucestershire, which he spent decades restoring.
Chadwick died in April 2003, months before a retrospective of his work opened at Tate Britain in London. René Gimpel, the co-founder of Gimpel Fils gallery, told Artnet News in 2014 that, later in his career, Chadwick “felt estranged from the art world and lamented the lack of attention by younger critics”. Chadwick’s work is present today, however in major museum collections including Tate Britain, Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. His famed sculpture King and Queen (1990) sits above the entrance of Fortnum & Mason store in London.
The Chadwick work going under the hammer at Christie’s London, meanwhile, is his sculpture Back to Venice (1988). The work, which will carry an estimate of £1m to £1.5m, comes from the collection of the late cancer specialist, Robert A. Holton. It was created for the Venice Biennale in 1988, after the British Council invited Chadwick to return and create a large sculpture for the garden of the British Pavilion and was shown in the garden alongside sculptures by Anthony Caro, Phillip King and Joe Tilson.
