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FOREWORD Dylan Lewis began to create animal sculptures 15 years ago and spent over a decade focusing on animal forms; his work is now devoted to exploring the human figure, often with animal skull masks. The newest Lewis sculptures examine the development of humans out of animals. They are half natural, half abstract. They are about the sculptor's deepening belief that the best life for human beings is one that is in touch with our twin natures. This auction, exclusively of the animal works, is the last of its type at Christie's. Lewis, to my eye, is the 21st Century equal of Remington and Rembrandt Bugatti as a supreme wildlife sculptor. But his is not sporting art, big game for billionaires, or a glamorised sculpture of animal forms. It is sculpture with agenda. In both animal and the human works, the wilderness is Lewis's subject, his sculpture. Lewis believes that in large parts of the world our sense of the wild has disappeared and with it, something of deep value. What he seeks to express is the value that lies in wildness - wildness of spirit, wildness of soul. It starts with animal energy, for him the quality of conceiving a goal and then acting directly to realise it. Energy is a thrilling quality of his sculpture. Animals are driven by their natural selves while humans, in a self-defeating way, have closed that line of command; we, as Lewis sees us, have killed the good as well as the bad sides of our natures as the price of civilised living. Lewis's bronze animals do not call for the death of civilisation. But they exude the many forgotten advantages of natural life. All of us are deficient, in our different ways, in the wealth of the world; above all we are deficient in natural, essential feeling. Do Lewis's running cheetahs, wild and free, proclaim that civilised society lacks final value, that it deals in luxuries, myths and frauds? Staring at these bronzes on view at Christie's, I see above all powerful predators who kill without discrimination. What is admirable about that? 'Generally animals do not kill for pleasure,' answers Lewis. The sculptor reflects. 'But animal violence seems to me to be less complex than human violence. It is mostly about territory, survival, killing to preserve their genetic strain.' Lewis is not, he insists, making final judgments. He is aware that "the advanced life of the West is at some level destroying the planet" but he does not demand, like Thoreau, that we abandon the city for fire and water in the woods. His compromise is no half-baked Rousseauism or rewrite of the German Romantic poets. Lewis believes that we are remaking the world at galloping speed in the 21st century, which makes some consideration of where our human values truly lie all the more critical. Godfrey Barker THE ANIMAL SCULPTURES OF DYLAN LEWIS 1990 - 2005 Dylan Lewis is in his mid-forties, a second-generation South African artist whose grandparents moved from the United Kingdom to South Africa at the turn of the 19th century. Lewis started his career as a painter and had forged a reputation for himself as such before turning his attention to sculpture soon after the death of his father, Robin Lewis, a well-respected sculptor of birds. Following in his father's footsteps, Lewis's first sculptures were done very much in his father's fashion and were also of bird forms. However, Lewis quickly started to develop his own style and added successive new animal subjects to his repertoire, including rhino, buffalo, baboon, and most prolifically, the large wild cat predators of Africa. From 1990 to 2005, working from his studio just outside Stellenbosch, Cape Town, Lewis focused extensively on animals. Over this time he exhibited his work across the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom and in South Africa, becoming widely recognised as one of the world's foremost sculptors of the animal form. This sale follows on from Lewis's solo auction in June 2007 at Christie's, when 75 of his sculptures went under the hammer in an auction entitled 'Predators and Prey'. That auction featured predominantly works from the earlier years of Lewis's animal period. 'Predators and Prey Part II' features works predominantly from the later part of his animal period. This represents the last time that such a comprehensive collection of animal sculptures from this period will be available through auction. A number of the lots have an italicised commentary, these are taken from the publication 'Dylan Lewis in Stellenbosch' written and edited by Laura Twiggs.

Eagle Owl

DYLAN LEWIS (B. 1964)

Details

Eagle Owl
DYLAN LEWIS (B. 1964)
bronze
'Dylan Lewis 93 S18', Jupiter Studios foundry stamp
10½ in. (26.7 cm.) high; 9¼ in. (23.5 cm.) wide; 7 7/8 in. (20 cm.) deep
Edition number 10 of 10

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