Sale: 520 / Evening Sale, June 18. 2021 in Munich Lot 326

 

326
Lynn Chadwick
Maquette for R34 (Maquette for Stranger III), 1959.
Bronze with dark brown patina
Estimate:
€ 80,000 / $ 86,400
Sold:
€ 150,000 / $ 162,000

(incl. surcharge)
Maquette for R34 (Maquette for Stranger III). 1959.
Bronze with dark brown patina.
Farr/Chadwick 321. Inscribed with name, number and work number on the base. There also with the foundry mark "Cera Persa / Brotal / Mendrisio". From an edition of 6 copies. 43.4 x 53.5 x 15 cm (17 x 21 x 5.9 in).
Cast by Fonderia Brotal Mendrisio, Switzerland (with foundry mark).
• Particularly finely modulated, moving surface structure.
• The only copy of "Maquette for R34" offered on the international auction market to date.
• A copy of the significant, large version of our work "Stranger III" is on the grounds of Lypiatt Park, the artist's estate (now Estate of Lynn Chadwick).
• In 1959 this large version of our work was shown at documenta II in Kassel.
• Other works by the artist from the late 1950s are at, among others, the Metropolitan Museum, New York and Tate Gallery in London
.

We are grateful to Dr. Sarah Marchant for her kind support in cataloging this lot.

PROVENANCE: Marlborough Fine Art, London (1963/64).
Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia (as of 1964, presumably acquired from the above).
Private collection Berlin (inherited from the above).
Private collection Southern Germany (acquired from the above).

LITERATURE: Dennis Farr and Éva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick. Sculptur, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue (1947-2005), Aldershot 2006, p. 166, cat. no. 321 (with black-and-white illu.).
"It seems to me that art must be the manifestation of some vital force coming from the dark, caught by the imagination and transformed by the artist's ability and skill into painting, poetry, sometimes music. But whatever the final shape, the force behind it is, as the man said of peace, indivisible."
Lynn Chadwick, 1953, quote from: www.pangolinlondon.com

Today Lynn Chadwick is considered one of the most important sculptors of his generation. Although he did not begin to work as sculptor before the late 1940s, his unwavering artistic endeavors brought him great successes from an early point on. He was chosen, along with Kenneth Armitage, William Turnbull, Eduardo Paolozzi and other artists, to represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennial as early as in 1952. The exhibition "New Aspects of British Sculpture" was instantly met with great international recognition. In 1956 - contrary to general expectations – it was not Alberto Giacometti who received the International Sculpting Award at the 28th Venice Biennia but Chadwick. In 2001 he became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2003 the London Tate Britain honored him with a grand retrospective exhibition. Today Chadwick's works can be admired in a number of renowned museums, among them the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery, London, and the Center Georges Pompidou, Paris. Unlike the often chiseled and modeled works of his famous predecessors Barbara Hepworth or Henry Moore, the artist creates his works in an additive process. His earliest sculptures consist of welded metal rods and metal or slate plates and, for their delicacy and mobility, call reminiscence of mobiles or the works of Alexander Calder. Works made as of the early 1950s consist of a welded framework of iron rods which Chadwick filled with a concrete compound and put them on thin, lanky legs. With this idiosyncratic creative process, the artist starts in abstraction and attains figuration through the consecutive work steps. In the second half of the 1950s, these forms began to solidify and Chadwick found his very own, characteristic style, with which he primarily examined the physical presence of the human body in single or multi-figure compositions. The present "Maquette for R34" is one of Chadwick's early bronzes and a smaller version of the monumental bronze "Stranger III" (1959), which was part of Documenta II in Kassel the year it was made. It testifies to Chadwick's characteristic formal reduction of reality and his unwavering quest for the perfect balance between movement and stability. Both his monumental and smaller bronzes underline that nuanced hints at posture and body language convey a much greater liveliness than fully executed facial features and limbs - especially in connection with the magnificently carved, uneven surface texture. The bronze offered here visualizes the unique style of an artist with an oeuvre that covers almost 50 years and that has had lasting impact on British post-war sculpting art. [CH]



326
Lynn Chadwick
Maquette for R34 (Maquette for Stranger III), 1959.
Bronze with dark brown patina
Estimate:
€ 80,000 / $ 86,400
Sold:
€ 150,000 / $ 162,000

(incl. surcharge)