Pangolin London presents a major show of the early work of celebrated
sculptor Ralph Brown, the first in over two decades. Born in Leeds in 1928
Brown was the younger contemporary of the eminent group of Yorkshire
sculptors that included Henry Moore, Kenneth Armitage and Barbara
Hepworth.
Like Moore, who befriended him and encouraged him by buying his work, Brown’s
art is deeply rooted in the figurative tradition. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, when
abstraction prevailed in British sculpture, Brown remained faithful to the human figure
and he has long stood out among his contemporaries as a master of human anatomy.
Brown’s ability to capture the human form and condition through modelling is
truly outstanding and is in many ways absolutely unique. This exhibition hopes that
through revisiting the early decades of Brown’s work we will appreciate once more
an artist who has for too long been overlooked.
Brown’s sculptures can be seen as enigmatic contradictions, they are shocking yet
sensous, savage yet imbued with a humanist concern for the pathos of the human
condition. Their surfaces pulsate with an often erotic energy with clefts and folds,
pits and creases, which contrary to popular depiction, explore sculpting the body
from the inside out. The graphic genital imagery or ‘erotic equivalent forms’ as
Brown terms them, were in the 1950s and 60s truly shocking. His sculptures had to
be removed from exhibitions and photographs blacked out in catalogues. The ox’s
gaping body cavity in The Meat Porters is as obvious a metaphor as Sarah Lucas’
Chicken Knickers. The Tiresias Head and Female Head pre-empt the Chapman
brothers’ supplementation of genitalia for facial features decades later.
Not all Brown’s sculptures convey such forceful sexuality however. His Swimmers
series are immensely graceful in their weightlessness. His Child with Wheel is a playful
and touching childhood moment captured and his Tragic Group a mournful but
dignified response to the horrific revelations after the Second World War of
Nazi death camps.
Ralph Brown was elected a Royal Academician in 1972 and his work can be found in
many public collections including the Arts Council of Great Britain, Bristol City Art
Gallery, Leeds City Art Gallery, The National Museum of Wales and the Tate Collection.
QUOTES
‘So much of Brown’s sculpture is his search for equivalents, in formal terms, for sensual
experiences.’
Denis Farr Ralph Brown Sculpture and Drawings
‘…a female back is a beautiful thing – an immensely complicated shape, full of power
and tension… without it being too obtrusive… I know a lot about the human figure, but I
can’t know all about it, no one can.’
Ralph Brown in conversation with Denis Farr February 1988
‘I don’t know whether it is true or not, but in England, north country people are looked
upon as being very matter-of-fact, practical, hard-headed people. This may have something
to do – I don’t know; it’s just a fanciful idea, probably – but this may have something
to do with the fact that in England now there are some twenty or thirty young
sculptors who’ve cropped up since the war; four or five of them are certainly Yorkshire.
There’s me, there’s Barbara Hepworth, there’s [Kenneth] Armitage, there’s Ralph Brown
and [Leslie] Thornton.’
Henry Moore, from Warren Forma, 5 British Sculptors
EDITOR'S NOTES
Pangolin London is closely affiliated with Pangolin Editions, Europe’s leading
sculpture foundry, casting sculpture for an international clientele to any scale, and
is one of the last foundries still practising the traditional skills of lost wax block
investment alongside the latest technologies
Gallery information and opening times:
Pangolin London, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9AG
(020) 7520 1480
[email protected]
www.pangolinlondon.com
Tuesday – Sunday 10am-6pm, Monday by appointment only
Prices range from £1,500 to £100,000.
A full colour catalogue will accompany this exhibition.
