Dame Elisabeth Frink, R.A.

Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York, where acquired by Milton Ginsburg, 13th February 1979

London, Waddington and Tooth Galleries, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture, Drawings, 30th November - 22nd December 1976, un-numbered, illustrated (different casts);
London, Battersea Park, 1977 (details untraced);
New York, Terry Dintenfass Gallery, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture, Watercolours, Prints, 1979 (catalogue untraced);
Toronto, Waddington and Shiell Galleries, Elisabeth Frink, 1979 (details untraced);
Winchester, Great Courtyard, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture in Winchester, 1981, un-numbered catalogue, one illustrated (different casts);
Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Elisabeth Frink: Open Air Retrospective, 21st July - 14th November 1983, cat. no.12, illustrated (different casts);
King's Lynn, St Margaret's Church, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture (part of King's Lynn Festival), 1984 (catalogue untraced, different casts);
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Elisabeth Frink, Sculpture and Drawings 1952-1984, 8th February - 24th March 1985, cat. no.67-70, illustrated (different casts);
Washington, The National Museum for Women in the Arts, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Drawings, 1950-1990, 1990, un-numbered catalogue, illustrated (different casts);
Salisbury, Salisbury Library and Galleries, Elisabeth Frink: A Certain Unexpectedness, 10th May - 7th June 1997, un-numbered catalogue (different casts).

Marina Vaizey, The Sunday Times, 19th December 1976;
John Spurling, 'On The Move', New Statesman, 10th December 1976, pp.848-50;
Ann Hills, Arts Review, 10th December 1976, p.698;
Terence Mullaly, 'Bronze Heads Dominate Frink Show', The Daily Telegraph, 8th December 1976, p.13;
Roger Berthoud, 'Elisabeth Frink: A Comment on the Future', The Times, 3rd December 1976;
Brian Connell, 'Capturing the Human Spirit in Big, Bronze Men', The Times, 5th September 1977, p.5;
Hilton Kramer, 'Art: A Sculptor in Grand Tradition', The New York Times, 2nd February 1979, p.21;
'Elisabeth Frink', Art International vol.23/2, May 1979;
C. Nicholas-White, 'Three Sculptors: Judd, Vollmer & Frink', Art World, February/March 1979;
Adele Freedman, 'Horses, Men and Sculpture in the Grand Tradition', Globe and Mail, Toronto, 8th September 1979, p.35;
Irene McManus, 'Elisabeth Frink: An Open Air Retrospective', Arts Review, 2nd September 1983, pp.10-11;
Bryan Robertson (intro.), Elisabeth Frink Sculpture, Harpvale Books, Salisbury, 1984, cat. no.219-222, illustrated p.185 (different casts);
Edward Lucie-Smith & Elisabeth Frink, Frink, A Portrait, Bloomsbury, London, 1994, illustrated p.46 (different casts);
Annette Ratuszniak (ed.), Elisabeth Frink, Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture 1947-93, Lund Humphries in association with the Frink Estate and Beaux Arts, London, 2013, cat. no.FCR247-250, p.130 illustrated (different casts).

The following report has been kindly prepared by Plowden & Smith Ltd., 190 St Ann's Hill, London, SW18 2RT. The pieces was examined at Sotheby's facility in Greenford Park in the prevailing light conditions. All four pieces are structurally sound. The patina on all four heads is Penny Bronze brown with a pale green background. The condition is consistent across all four heads. On each head there are paler green water run off marks and patches that are visible. These are consistent with having been stored in a moist environment and will remain stable if kept in dry conditions. To rectify these marks completely, the piece would need to be repatinated Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

‘[They] are perhaps a comment on where we are heading: as far as I can see, towards a new dark age in human relations. They are about peace and freedom of spirit: people have been through the horrors and got through to the other side. They are not political prisoners, but maybe they were.’ (Frink, archive ephemera, reprinted in Annette Ratuszniak (ed.), Elisabeth Frink: Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture 1947-93, Lund Humphries, London, 2013, p.130).

Throughout her career, and indeed from early in her life, Elisabeth Frink was preoccupied with the idea of ‘maleness.’ We see in her sculptures a search for archetypes: her men are heroes, they are villains, there is strength, but she is also interested in vulnerability. This is evident in her horse and rider figures - the nude male exposed atop a powerful mount - and again in her Tribute Heads - universal images of man’s suffering, but also their resilience. They represent a masculine ideal, but not one of force or outward bravado, rather a refined and powerful stoicism.

Frink’s father was a soldier in the Second World War and while missing for much of her childhood, may have been part of the reason she became fixated with male iconography. As she states:

‘I had a great admiration for men from an early age. This was partly because my father was extremely handsome. I was used to meeting his colleagues - his fellow officers - and they were very glamorous in their uniforms: cavalry boots and things like that. Men were very much part of my early life because of the army. I used to look up to them, and hero-worship them’ (Frink quoted in Edward Lucie-Smith and Elisabeth Frink, Frink: A Portrait, Bloomsbury Publishing Limited, London, 1994, p.15).

During the war Frink lived in Suffolk and came in contact with aircraft and pilots of the Great Bomber Command. A group of Polish airmen were frequent visitors to her family home and it is perhaps here she first came face to face with the contrast between outward male vigour and each of our inherent fragility, as she witnessed planes arriving back on the airfield on fire or heard of those lost in action.

This first hand observation of man’s brutality to man remained rooted in Frink’s psyche and was a subject that occupied her artistic output.  In the 1960s she began a series of monumental male busts- entitled Goggle Head (see lot 18). Following the Algerian War, Frink was gript by a photo of General Oufkir - a man who was responsible for the death of an Algerian freedom fighter. His boorish face, inscrutable due to the sunglasses he wore, becoming the inspiration for the brutal, harsh, mindless and eternal heads she produced. They embody masculinity, with their pronounced jaws and thick proportions recalling such historic precursors as the Colossus of Constantine, Rome. While inspired by a pictorial source, the heads are purposefully anonymous; they remain universal symbols of male aggression and self-aggrandisement.

Following this series, Frink moved on to the Tribute Heads, which in some ways act as the Goggle Head’s counterpoint. Going from one extreme of human nature to another, they are symbols of fortitude following extreme suffering: refined, restrained, serene and internal representations. A long supporter of Amnesty International, the Tribute Heads were done as a type of homage to the human rights group, but it was suffering generally that interested her, regardless of the time or historical source. They are not individuals; they are emblems of survival. This idea of martyrdom and suffering for a cause continued in her sculpture in works such as In Memoriam (1981) and Christ (1983), a monumental bust which in its pared down depiction of the face, smooth pronounced features, eyes closed and beardless, bears many similarities to the Tribute Heads.