Lot Essay
The subject of the Wrestlers was inspired by Gaudier's visit to the London Wrestling Club off Fleet Street where he made numerous drawings of the athletes 'large shoulders, taut enormous necks like bulls, small in build, firm thighs, slender ankles, feet as sensitive as hands and not tall but they fight with a fantastic vivacity and spirit' (www.tate.org.uk). Roger Cole writes, 'The relief was the culmination of a large number of drawings on this subject which gradually become more simplified. The treatment is essentially two-dimensional and is concerned to establish a rhythmic interrelation of shapes. The flat treatment of the hands, which is a further progression from earlier expressions of the same form, serve to accentuate the flow of lines in the two figures. There is little development of style in the design of the two heads, in comparison with the Embracers, but what is quite evident is that the proportion and natural physical organistion of the figure has been abandoned entirely in favour of the direct expression of the interralationships of the subject. Consequently this work established a further step towards an original means of expression, in which the drawing and sculpture were one'. (R. Cole, loc. cit.)