William Turnbull

Acquired directly from the Artist by the present owner

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull, 27th November – 23rd December 1985, cat. no.11, illustrated p.23 (another cast);
Berlin, Galerie Folker Skulima, William Turnbull, 4th September – 22nd October 1987 (another cast);
Caracas, Galeria Freites, William Turnbull, 18th October – 10th November 1992, illustrated p.12 (another cast); 
London, Waddington Galleries, Works on Paper and Sculpture, 8th September – 2nd October 1993, cat. no.62 (ex. cat.) (another cast);
New York, Barbara Mathes Gallery, William Turnbull, 15th October – 28th November 1998 (another cast);
West Bretton, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull: Retrospective 1946–2003, 14th May – 9th October 2005, cat. no.19, p.13, (another cast).

Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat. no.230, p.164, illustrated (another cast).

The sculpture is affixed to a York stone base with one central support. The sculpture appears sound. There is a very slight casting flaw apparent to the 'neck' of the work, near to the vertical lines above the protruding curve, running horizontally. There is some very slight rubbing to the extreme edges of the sculpture. There is some very light surface dirt. The work appears to be in very good overall condition. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In the early 1970s, William Turnbull decided that he had taken his minimalist work, made from prefabricated industrial elements, as far as he could and as a consequence stopped making sculpture altogether – focussing instead on his painting. However, when he saw the full extent of his sculptural body of works at his Tate retrospective in 1973, he became conscious of the common themes and ideas that had informed his oeuvre. These included a preoccupation with artefacts from ancient civilisations and sculpture that was symbolic of both our past and current condition of human existence. In response to this experience, Turnbull decided to redefine his earlier ideas about sculpture. Returning to the motifs of heads, masks, figures and horses, he explored ideas which he had developed in his 1950s sculptures, but with a new-found clarity of expression. He made many small clay models, discovering fresh directions for his sculpture through the process and from 1979 onwards he cast some of these pieces in bronze and developed others into larger versions to create a new series of idols.

Ideas of fertility, in both the male and female form, are important to Turnbull’s works of the 1980s. Metamorphosis of 1984 is distinctly feminine and bears marked similarities to Turnbull iconic sculpture, Leda, of the same year which was sold from the collection of the late Stanley J. Seeger by Sotheby’s in 2014 for £64,900. Although abstract, the sculpture’s vertical form is governed by a soft curve which seems to suggest the swell of a woman’s hips or a pregnant stomach. The deep, rich patina of the surface and the sinuous form is pierced by straight calligraphic incisions. These lines evoke the tribal markings of non-Western cultures and from certain angles suggest female legs and breasts. There is a tension between the balanced simplistic form and a deeply filled content. Indeed, the piece seems to be a symbol or token of another, unknown culture, yet it is instantly recognisable to the contemporary, urban viewer. As such, it seems to fulfil one of Modernism’s key ideas (based on the work of the psychologist Carl Jung), that of the primacy of ‘universal forms’: shapes and symbols that describe the deep, underlying nature of human experience, which are lost to industrial Western culture but preserved and very much ‘alive’ in non-European tribal art or the artefacts from ‘primitive’ cultures.