Modern British sculptors are at last enjoying their fair share of the limelight, with prices for sculpture being dragged higher by the record prices commanded by modern paintings in recent years.
Some of the best-known names are speeding up: works by Henry Moore and Lynn Chadwick are currently rising in value at about 25 per cent a year, while others, such as Frank Dobson and Leon Underwood, are going up by much more. There is a chance to see and buy some of this work at the nineteenth 20/21 British Art Fair (20/21 refers to the 20th and 21st centuries) at the Royal College of Art on September 13-17.
Peter Osborne, of Osborne Samuel, one of the 61 galleries represented at the fair, says: “Over the past five years dealers and collectors have been re-evaluating the work of some of the major sculptors — especially sculpture from the 1950s, which hit a high point when it was represented in the Venice Biennale in 1956 but then went quiet.”
Mr Osborne cites, in particular, the works of Reg Butler, Kenneth Armitage, Bernard Meadows and Chadwick as falling into this category, while other names belonging to that movement include Geoffrey Clarke, William Turnbull and Moore (an exception to the “all going quiet” rule). He also points to the artists known as constructivists, such as Kenneth and Mary Martin, Anthony Hill and Robert Adams.
The work of many of these artists is distinguished by a certain spikiness and edginess, hence the critic Herbert Read’s description of them as “the geometry of fear”. The artists were working at the height of the Cold War and the uncertainty of the time is clear in their works. Their subject matter, too, was dictated by the times: in 1953 a competition to design a monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner was won by Butler. Only the maquette was built, but the themes of oppression and alienation influenced the artist.
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There are several reasons for the neglect of these artists, Mr Osborne says. “In the art world, the lead was very much taken from New York, Paris and Tokyo, where modern British sculpture didn’t feature. Shipping costs were such that by the time it got there, the dealer wouldn’t make a profit. Many of the artists who had been well regarded in the early 1950s struggled to make a living after that.”
Indeed, much of the work at the fair is from a slightly later period, but the characteristics are much the same.
And the artists are regaining centre stage. A large piece by Chadwick recently sold for more than £1 million, a world record. Osborne Samuel has lower-priced works by the artist: Back to Venice (Small Version II) is £125,000 and Two Winged Figures is £65,000. Reclining Figures by Henry Moore is priced at £85,000.
Mr Osborne adds that the work of Meadows and Adams is still well priced.
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