The Humans and Other Animals exhibition will mark 25 years since the artist’s death
More than 130 works by the artist Elisabeth Frink, go on show in Norfolk this month for the largest showing of her work in the 25 years since her death.
Elisabeth Frink: Humans and Other Animals at the Sainsbury Centre will examine her radical and bohemian beginnings in 1950s London, reappraising one of the most important British sculptors of the 20th century. Frink’s work will be placed alongside other modern masters, including Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Auguste Rodin, Francis Bacon, Germaine Richier and Louise Bourgeois, in addition to work by two exciting contemporary artists, Douglas Gordon and Rebecca Warren.
The relationship between humans and animals was central for Suffolk-born Frink and one she returned to throughout her life. She rose to prominence while at Chelsea College of Art in 1952, when she had her first major gallery exhibition and won a prize in the international competition for the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner.
During this period, she created a series of expressionist bird sculptures, which for her, evoked ‘strong feelings of panic, tension, aggression and predatoriness’. Frink created one of the most succinct responses to the Second World War and to the climate of fear generated by the encroaching Cold War.
Frink’s most famous and unique theme is a series of Goggle Heads (1967-69) and Tribute Heads (1970s-80s). Ten of these larger-than-life-size bronze heads will be presented in the exhibition, the first time so many have been displayed together.
Elisabeth Frink: Humans and Other Animals; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, from October 13 to February 24, 2019.
