Exorcising the Fear: British Sculpture from the 1950s at Pangolin London

Exhibition: Exorcising the Fear: British Sculpture from the 1950s, Pangolin London, London, until March 3 2012

The large and pervasive forms of sculptural titans Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth still dominate popular notions of British sculpture in the mid-20th century, but a closer look at the post war era reveals a complexity of form as a new generation turned from carved stone and bronze to glass, wax, metal and wood.  

Pivotal to this sense of new innovation was the New Aspects of British Sculpture exhibition in the British Pavilion of the 1952 Venice Biennale.

Featuring work by a crop of artists including Lyn Chadwick and Eduardo Paolozzi, it had the art critic and Biennale selection committee member Herbert Read using descriptions such as "excoriated flesh", "frustrated sex" and, most famously, "the geometry of fear".

The work he was trying to describe was by turns frail, spindly and challenging. It seemed to reject the solidity of monumental sculpture in favour of linear forms and tortured figures that paradoxically suffused a new sense of adventure with the fearful apocalyptic shadow of the atomic age.

The eight British sculptors who made these works (Moore's Two Standing Figures was situated outside the Pavilion) went on to spearhead a new direction and fuel a British sculptural renaissance.

Pangolin has returned to this seminal moment with a celebratory show which revisits the work of the group, which also included Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Geoffrey Clarke, Bernard Meadows and William Turnbull.

It also brings together works by the next generation of sculptors such as Elizabeth Frink, John Hoskin and Michael Ayrton, who were influenced by them.

The intention is to capture the sense of excitement and innovation of the post war period and highlight the adventure and abstraction that began to take hold in British sculpture during the period.  

Rarely seen works include Chadwick's Bull Frog, Butler's Young Girl and Geoffrey Clarke's Man – part of a thoughtful selection holding close stylistic links to the work on display in Venice.

There is also a chance to see another rare Chadwick work, the monumental iron and glass creation Beast, which has not been seen in public since the 1950s.

It joins Paolozzi's 1957 bronze, Frog Eating a Lizard, and William Turnbull's minimal bronze with green patina on stone base, Strange Fruit. Robert Adams' Divided Column, made from birch wood, also makes a rare appearance.

Aside from offering the chance to revisit some of the most talked about sculpture of the 1950s, the work on display provides a bridge between the stone-carved and bronze world of Moore and Hepworth and the varied sculptural media we are familiar with today.

• Visit the exhibition online. Pangolin London, Kings Place, London. Open Tuesday-Saturday 10am-6pm. Admission free.

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