The early wounded birds, which preceded the images of men attempting to fly and helmeted and goggled airmen, soon gave place to idealised winged figures. Growing up in the country, close to animals and birds, Frink's sculptures of living creatures are by no means gloomy or painful. Patricia Strauss, the wife of George Russell Strauss MP - who tried to persuade the Government to use half of 1 per cent of the cost of all new buildings for works of art - pioneered the first international sculpture exhibition in Battersea Park.Ī good measure of all this hope and idealism is reflected in Elisabeth Frink's sculpture as an extension of her own stoic and idealistic nature. At CEMA, there was the startling discovery in the early years of the war that in many parts of the country quite large numbers of people had never seen an original work of art of any kind in their lives, a discovery which gave a real driving edge to the task of travelling exhibitions. Those who worked in the art world were encouraged by the greatly expanded public for art created through the wartime efforts of CEMA, the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, formed by Maynard Keynes, Kenneth Clark and others, the embryo of our post-war Arts Council. The Royal Festival Hall appeared on the South Bank. There seemed to be a real opportunity for good young architects to repair cities devastated by bombing with new architecture. In the world of art, architecture and design there was even an expansive feeling of optimism which culminated in the celebratory 1951 Festival of Britain. But the sombre mood of the times, still bleak in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was all the same fortified by the hopes aroused through the formation of the United Nations Organisation and sheer relief at the cessation of hostilities. Life in England was still harsh for at least a decade after the war, with the continuance of wartime rationing and the day-to-day reality, often lowering to the spirit, of an impoverished austerity. Her earliest drawings, even before she went to Chelsea School of Art in 1949, were powerful but grim in tone: wounded birds, apocalyptic horses and riders, falling men. As a 15-year-old schoolgirl, she watched on her local cinema screen the first appalling news pictures of Belsen. As a very young schoolgirl, Frink had to hide in the hedges from the machine-gun attack of a German fighter plane. Her father was at Dunkirk as a professional soldier, and saw much action elsewhere the family at home lived near an airfield in Suffolk where bombers often returned to base in flames. In 1993, Risen Christ in Liverpool was to be her last sculpture and one week after it was installed, she passed away.If Frink's professional context with its fresh opportunities came from Moore's wartime example and success, her imaginative world was also quite radically affected, if not fully formed, by the war. In 1991, after constant commissions for sculpting and more exhibiting, Frink underwent an operation for cancer of the oesophagus and was forced to rest, although a few weeks later she was sculpting again. In 1980s retrospective exhibitions were planned of her life’s work and the success from this prompted four more solo exhibitions, along with several group exhibitions.įrink continued to work tirelessly, meeting art students, advising committees and accepting sculpting commissions. On her return to England, she designed sculptures of barrel-chested, male nude forms with mask like features. In France during the late 60s, early 70s she began a series of monumental male heads with a threatening manner. Some feel that was influenced by the war and her living so close to a military base when she was a young child. In the 1960s she did a series of falling figures and winged men. She very rarely designed pictures or sculptures of the female form. Frink’s subject manner in her earlier pieces include birds, men, horses and religious motifs. From 1946-1949 she studied at the Guildford School of Arts and then at the Chelsea School of Art from 1949 to 1953. She is known for her sculpting and printmaking. Dame Elisabeth Frink was born in 1930 in Suffolk, England.
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