London Art@Site www.artatsite.com Lynn Chadwick Couple on Seat
Artist:

Lynn Chadwick

Title:

Couple on Seat

Year:
1984
Adress:
Cabot Square, Canary Wharf
Website:
www.canarywharf.com:
Lynn Chadwick (1914-2003) began his career as an architectural draughtsman but after World War II he took up sculpture. Couple on Seat* is one of his later works. He produced many pieces with figures, following in the tradition of sculptor Henry Moore.
This work is reminiscent of earlier sculptures in which he combined polished, faceted surfaces with rougher areas, supported on thin spindly legs. Chadwick created a permanent exhibition of his work at his home at Lypiatt Park in Gloucestershire. *Courtesy of the Lypiatt Studios and Pangolin Editions.

www.paulinehughesceramics.com:
When I first came across the sculpture of Lynn Chadwick I was about seventeen and really did’nt know what to make of it. Now, twenty odd years later I find myself still in the same position. I suppose this is the nub of the work for me, that it keeps me guessing and enquiring . That it is not all over and done with in one glance. Chadwick began his career as an architectural draughtsman before moving into sculpture. You can clearly see in ‘couple on a seat’ how his work fits in perfectly to the built environment. All angles and straight lines. He pioneered a new of working, turning away from traditional modelling techniques to construct metal skeletons that he welded sheets of metal skin onto. Buildings on stilts, on legs, movable. They are the embodiment of the thousands who were displaced in the second world war. Human beings carrying their homes on their backs, moving around a hostile European landscape. These pieces became affiliated with the post war artists whose ‘ geometry of fear’ portrayed spiky, twisted human forms that reflected the anxieties and fears of this period.

www.sothebys.com:
In Couple on Seat, Chadwick distinguishes the male from the female figure, and the female represented by a triangular head, the male a square. He believed that a more symbolic and simple head would allow for greater power of expression to come from the body language. Rather than having one sex be the more dominating presence than the other, both can be interpreted as equally balanced and strong, and perhaps feel even more powerful together than they would do individually.

www.sothebys.com:
Chadwick has always been intrigued by movement, either actual or implied, in his sculpture. From his early mobiles to his dancing Teddy Boy and Girl series of the 1950s to his cloaked walking women with windswept hair of the 1980s, he has explored figures in motion. Sometimes their cloaks and draperies flow out in the wind from behind them, or are caught by a gust and wrap themselves around the figures. This essentially lateral progression gives place to a vertical rhythm in his groups of, usually two, figures.

www.sothebys.com:
His fascination with the figure was in part a response to the scenes witnessed during World War II, as well those around him in everyday life in cosmopolitan London after the war. However rather than depicting the human body as fragile or corporeal, as many artists were during and after the war, Chadwick instead presents his with a sense of endurance, strength and inner spirituality, or as he cited it, ‘attitude’.
'I would call it attitude, you know, the way that you can make something almost talk by the way the neck is bent, or the attitude of the head; you can actually make these sculptures talk, they say something according to the exact balance ...'

www.sothebys.com:
Lynn Chadwick rose to prominence as part of a group of eight young sculptors representing Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1952.
The artists would become known as the ‘geometry of fear’ generation, a term coined by art historian Herbert Read, who felt their works typified the angst of the post-War period.
The 1952 exhibition thrust Chadwick onto the international stage, and he would go on to cement his influence by winning the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1956, at the age of just 41, beating Alberto Giacometti. The significance of this achievement cannot be under-estimated: at the time, the grand prize was usually reserved for sculptors who were already well-established international figures, such as Henry Moore (who won it in 1948), Marino Marini (1952) or Hans Arp (1954). It was very much a turning point in his career, and in the 1960s, Chadwick shifted his style away from anthropomorphised sculptures with roughly textured surfaces, often built in iron and stolit, and towards a sleeker, more angular and geometric vision. It is a style which is both instantly recognizable and iconic, and Couple on Seat is one of Chadwick’s most important works from this second period in his career.