Lynn Chadwick (1914-2003)
English sculptor and artist Lynn Russell Chadwick was born in London in 1914. Chadwick started out as an intern as a draftsman for the offices of architect Donald Hamilton and later for the architects Eugen Carl Kauffmann and Rodney Thomas.
Available Lynn Chadwick works:
Early career as a sculptor
In 1941 Chadwick volunteered to serve in the Royal Navy, and from 1941 to 1944 he served as a pilot escorting Atlantic convoys.
In 1946 he entered a textile design competition and won a £50 prize, which earned him an offer to make more designs for the shape-shifting rule breakers of British fabric design Zika and Lida Ascher who also included artists Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore to make designs.
Around 1947, inspired by the ideas of architect and artist Rodney Thomas (1902–1996), Lynn Chadwick created his first mobile sculpture. Very few of these delicate works survive; they were made of wire, balsa wood, and carved copper and brass shapes.
Later he developed ground supports for the mobiles, which he transformed into what he called 'stabiles'.
Chadwick left London in 1947, in search of more space to work, for the medieval village of Upper Coberley south of Cheltenham.
Chadwick's career as a sculptor started in 1947 when a small mobile sculpture was displayed in the window of the London art dealer Gimpel Fils. Following his first solo show at Gimpel Fils in 1948, he received several important commissions for sculptures.
XXVI Venice Biennale
In 1952 eight young British sculptors were invited to exhibit at the Biennale. Chadwick along with Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull, among others received very positive criticism for their work and Chadwick's reputation as a sculptor skyrocketed and he became an international name.
In 1958 Chadwick bought a medieval and Tudor manor house with notable nineteenth-century additions in Gloucestershire named Lypiatt Park. In the medieval chapel he created his studio. Over the years Chadwick restored the house and garden and in 1986 bought the surrounding land in Toadsmoor Valley to place his sculptures.
Important sculptor
In 1956 he was chosen as one of the lead sculptors to represent Britain XXVIII Venice Biennale where he was awarded the International Sculpture Prize, surpassing the favourite Alberto Giacometti.
In the 1960s, Chadwick's work was overshadowed by the rise of pop art, but his work remained popular, especially in Italy, Denmark and Belgium. The power of his work wanes in the later years, we see repetition in his work in the form of rectangular and triangular heads, although these sculptures are popular with collectors they lack the tension of the works, for example the 'Beasts' from the 1950s and 1960s.
Lynn Chadwick died in 2003 and was buried amongst the pine trees near the seat where he used to sit and think, overlooking Toadsmoor Valley.