FEATURES ARCHIVE

As early as the late 19th century, artists were beginning to look at pictures as just that, pictures. As attention moved away from the object, it started to centre on the emotions evoked in the viewer. Direct descriptions became indirect suggestions and pictures became their own entities. Abstract art was individual to countries, movements and strands of thought. Abstract artist and sculptor Lynn Chadwick was inspired by flight and movement, whilst John Piper was inspired by colour theory as his vibrant work Abstraction reflects.

JOHN PIPER

Piper’s earliest abstract paintings date from 1935 – the year he visited the studios of Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp, Jean Helion and Alexander Calder in France. During this year, Piper exhibited these works at the 7 + 5 Society exhibition at Zwemmer Gallery, London, which included works by British abstract artists, led by Ben Nicholson. The collaged elements within these works, such as in Abstraction, later dated by the artist as 1937, but more likely created in 1935, reflect the influence of Picasso’s Cubism.

ALAN DAVIE

Alan Davie started his creative life as a poet, then becoming a jazz musician playing the saxophone. It was not until 1948 that he decided he wanted to focus on painting. He was inspired by the American abstract expressionists, Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell, and although he did not imitate these artists, he enjoyed Pollock’s method of working on the floor.

LYNN CHADWICK

Chadwick had only been a sculptor for 6 years when he won the 1956 International Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale, pipping established artists such as Giacometti to the post. Soon private collectors and public institutions the world over were vying with each other to acquire his work.

Originally an architect and later, during World War II, a pilot, Lynn Chadwick was fascinated by materials, flight and motion itself. Early on in his career he started to suspend objects in mid air so as to allow currents of air to move through them – unaware that across the Atlantic, Alexander Calder was doing the same thing.

Aware that his technical skills could not keep pace with his imagination, he enrolled on a welding course which enabled him to create the self-balancing stationary sculptures which defined him. Mobile to be offered in the May sale is from this early period, a year after his first one-man show and the year he produced two sculptures for the 1951 Festival of Britain. A rarity to behold, Mobile is the very essence of Lynn Chadwick’s oeuvre.