Reg Butler

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Reg Butler: Sculpture & Drawings 1954-1958, February 1959, no.18, illustrated in the catalogue;
New York, MOMA, New Images of Man, September - November 1959, no.24;
Birmingham, Cannon Hill Park, Contemporary British Sculpture, April - May 1960, no.5, illustrated in the catalogue, and touring to Barnsley, Manchester, Stratford-upon-Avon, Edinburgh and Cheltenham;
London, Hanover Gallery, Reg Butler: Sculpture, June - July 1960, no.26 illustrated in the catalogue;
Paris, Musee Rodin, 2^nd International Exhibition of Contemporary Sculpture, no.82;
Cambridge, Arts Council Gallery, The Gregory Fellows, February 1964, no.3, and touring to Bolton, Liverpool, Nottingham, Southampton and Cardiff;
London, Tate Gallery, Reg Butler, November 1983- January 1984, no.57, illustrated in the catalogue (another cast);
London, Gimpel Fils, Musee Imaginaire: Bronzes Middle and Late Period, 10 September - 11 October 1986, no. 11, illustrated in the catalogue (another cast).

Robert Melville, 'In connection with the sculpture of Reg Butler', Motif, no.6, 1961, pp.27-39;
Margaret Garlake, New Art New World: British Art in Post War Society, Yale, New Haven & London, 1998, p.198, illustrated pl.89;
Martin Harrison, Transition: The London Art Scene in the Fifties, Merrell in association with Barbican Art, 2002, illustrated p. 71 (another cast);
Margaret Garlake, The Sculpture of Reg Butler, HMF/Lund Humphries 2006, no.180, illustrated p.93.

There are some very minor scratches to the edges of the base, some minor surface dirt to the crevices and a very small area of minor oxidation where the head of the figure meets the long rods otherwise in good overall condition.
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Conceived in 1957 and cast in an edition of 8 by Susse Fondeur, Paris.

Female figures form by far the largest part of Butler's subject matter in the 1950s, and whilst many of these figures are presented standing or stretching, towards the end of the decade a group of sculptures evolve on a theme of Figure in Space. Relating to earlier sculptures, such as Study for Sculpture - St.Catherine (Garlake 137) and Study for Figure Falling (Garlake 133), the twisted and stretched poses of the body offer a variety of links that can be explored. Butler's interest in Freud and Melanie Klein suggests that the dichotomy between the opposing forces in Butler's representation of female forms noted by John Berger in 1954 would seem to have some grounds. Artistically, comparisons can be drawn with the surrealist treatment of the female figure, especially that of Hans Bellmer, but perhaps the most revealing might be with two artists of Butler's own generation, Francis Bacon and Germaine Richier, both of whose work seeks to explore the boundaries at which the human form loses its human qualities. Indeed all three exhibited with the Hanover Gallery in London, and Garlake suggests that Butler's viewing of Richier's 1955 Hanover Gallery exhibition may have led to his re-engagement with the theme the following year.

The sculptures that belong to the Figure in Space grouping all share certain characteristics, most notably the absence of feet and hands and the extreme tensions within the bodies. By stretching the figures on frames of rods, the pieces are given their own spatial dimensions and are thus separated from our own.