$34,365
Dame Elisabeth Frink, R. A. (British, 1930-1993) Birdman (1959) Signed "Frink" in cast on base, edition of 3. Bronze with dark brown patina, approximately 34 3/4 x 11 1/2 x 15 1/2 in. (88.3 x 29.2 x 39.4 cm). Condition: Minor surface grime. Literature: Robertson, Bryan. Elisabeth Frink Sculpture: Catalogue Raisonné. Salisbury: Harpvale Limited, 1984, pg. 149, no. 61 (illustrated). N.B. Dame Elisabeth Frink commonly chose men, dogs, horses, and birds as subject matter. She did not pursue pure abstraction and seldom worked with the female form, noting that "my sculptures of male figures represent both men and mankind. Men, because I enjoy looking at the male body and this has always given me…the impetus and the energy for a purely sensuous approach to sculptural form...I can sense in a man's body a combination of strength and vulnerability-vulnerability not as weakness, but as the capacity to survive through stoicism or passive resistance, and the ability to suffer or feel." (1) The present work is from her earlier period of male sculptures depicting bird men or men in flight, which according to the artist characterized "men at war" with "fractured wings or the debris of war and heroics." (2) (1) Robertson, Bryan, ed. Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Drawings, 1950-1990. The Washington D.C.: National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1990, pg. 49. (2) Ibid, 50. Surface grime, including pockets of plaster residue.
Auctioneer:
Skinner
Date:
2008-11-14
