John Berger, Scaffolding - Festival of Britain (1950). Courtesy Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London
Exhibition preview: Geometry of Fear, Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, January 16 - March 15 2009.
Coinciding with Holocaust Memorial Day later this month, The Arts Council Collection’s well-timed national tour of Geometry of Fear visits Leamington Spa next week (January 16 2009).
Geoffrey Clarke, Birth of a Flower (1951), intajlio print. Courtesy Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London
Named after the generation of sculptors it catalogues, and responding directly to the climate of fear generated by the Cold War and the horrors of World War II, it first appeared in Venice in 1952, where Herbert Read gave the group their title and likened their work to an “iconography of despair, or of defiance”, calling it “close to the nerves…nervous, wiry.”
Peter King, Hound (1956), metal. Courtesy Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London
Appearing almost exactly as it did six decades ago, the exhibition features a crop of artists whose styles are characterised by linear, spiky forms made from welded metal, physically reflecting the tension of the 1950s with a resonance which has not been lost on critics observing the current global socio-political uncertainty.
Reg Butler, Girl and Boy (1951), iron. Courtesy Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London
“The spiky, twisted and battered forms broke away from traditional sculptural techniques and vividly captured the anxieties and fears of the post-war period,” reflects Chloe Johnson, Senior Curatorial Officer at the museum.
Eduardo Paolozzi, Insects' Wings (1951), collage. Courtesy Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London
Reg Butler’s Girl And Boy, Eduardo Paolozzi’s The Cage and Kenneth Armitage’s Figure Lying on its Side are some of the highlights Johnson is looking forward to.
“It includes an extraordinarily rich selection of work by the sculptors who emerged after the Second World War and have since become major figures,” she says. “The works are as disturbing and impressive today as they were when they were first exhibited.”
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