sand cast aluminium, signed and numbered 10/10 to underside
12 x 25.5cm

Provenance:
The John Ady Collection

Writing in 1952, the critic and art historian, Sir Herbert Read, coined the term ‘the Geometry of Fear Sculptors’ to describe the most recent cohort of artists occupying the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The work of these artists reflected the anxieties of a post-war society through their use of sharp, distended, extra-terrestrial forms. Among this group, whose members included Lynn Chadwick, William Turnbull, Reg Butler, and Kenneth Armitage, was Geoffrey Clarke, who is today remembered as one of the most experimental and innovative British sculptors of the 20^th century.

By the time of the Venice Biennale, in 1952, Clarke had graduated from the Royal College of Art and was beginning to embark upon a decade of architectural and ecclesiastical sculptural commissions, many of which were monumental in their scale. Unlike his peers, who laboured over clay models before casting in bronze or iron, Clarke had to find ways to work economically and efficiently, and instead made his models in polystyrene before sand casting in aluminium and welding the constituent parts of his works together. The present lot, a maquette of a much larger work, is typical of Clarke’s rough-hewn aesthetic and pioneering use of material.

The present lot will be sold for the benefit of Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge

Condition Report
In good condition.