"To do what we must do with our world, we must use our imagination. It is as simple (and as complex) as that."
Hubert Dalwood was one of the leading post-war British sculptors. In the 1950s and 1960s his work received considerable critical acclaim both at home and abroad, winning prizes and prestigious commissions. In 1976, after a short illness, Dalwood died aged only fifty-two. Landscape into Sculpture, the New Art Centre’s forthcoming exhibition, is a major exhibition of work by an artist once regarded as one of sculpture’s brightest young stars. This show, featuring many works from the artist’s estate as well as rare film and audio footage, is a timely and sensitive reappraisal of work by an artist described by the eminent art critic Norbert Lynton as "one of the most original and inventive minds in the field of modern sculpture."
Dalwood was born in Bristol, 2 June 1924. He apprenticed as an engineer to the Bristol Aeroplane Company 1940-4 and served in the Royal Navy 1944-6. In 1951, having recently graduated from Bath Academy of Art where he was taught by Kenneth Armitage, Dalwood was awarded an Italian Government Scholarship which allowed him to spend time in both Sicily and Milan. Whilst in Italy he worked at a bronze foundry, casting works by Boccioni and became acquainted with Marino Marini. Returning from Italy, Dalwood taught at Newport School of Art and remained there until 1955 when he received the prestigious Gregory Fellowship at the University of Leeds. This award had been set up in 1950 to encourage and support the work of younger artists, musicians, writers and poets. Dalwood was interviewed for the Fellowship, by among others, T.S. Eliot, Professor Bonamy Dobrée and Henry Moore, the latter of which
purchased one of his works, Tree (1957). During this time Dalwood came into contact with Alan Davie and Terry Frost, both of whom were his contemporary Gregory Painting Fellows. Whilst at Leeds, Dalwood held teaching posts at Leeds College of Art, Royal College of Art, Hornsey College of Art and Maidstone College of Art.
In 1960 Dalwood held his third one-person exhibition at Gimpel Fils. Herbert Read contributed the catalogue introduction and the sculpture, increasingly non-figurative, attracted considerable attention and acclaim. Large Object (1959) was purchased by the Tate Gallery and another cast, purchased by David Thompson, was exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. During the 1960s Dalwood frequently participated in international exhibitions, he was awarded the David E. Bright Sculpture Prize at the Venice Biennale 1962 and was the visiting professor of sculpture at both the University of Illinois and University of Wisconsin. In 1972 he was awarded the Winston Churchill Fellowship and travelled to Japan to study the gardens in Kyoto.
By the mid 1970s Dalwood had been awarded several important commissions, including Fountain (1962) selected by Henry Moore for Nuffield College, Oxford; Untitled Relief (1963-4) for the refectory of the University of Manchester; and Untitled (1974) for Leicester City Council. In 1974 he became the Head of the Sculpture Department at Central School of Art, London and was appointed that year to be the Chairman of the Serpentine Gallery Committee.
Dalwood was ahead of his time in his attitude and application of architecture. Art into Landscape was a competition proposed by Hubert Dalwood and organised by the Arts Council, the RIBA, the Institute of Landscape Architects and The Sunday Times in 1974. The winning entries, which suggested ways to develop open spaces were exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery, London. This concern with architecture and man’s interventions within the landscape led Dalwood to increasingly collaborate with architects on projects and to begin work on a book on landscape and garden design. In 1975, at the opening of his first exhibition in Beirut, Dalwood met the architect Tony Irving with whom he was to collaborate on several projects in the Middle East.
Dalwood died in November 1976. At the time of his death he had plans to design large gardens, parks and buildings while continuing to make small viable sculptures in the studio. Several projects in Saudi Arabia and neighbouring states were left unfinished. In 1979 Catherine Lampert organised an Arts Council touring exhibition of Dalwood’s work that began at the Hayward Gallery.
Dalwood’s work has been exhibited by the New Art Centre for many years and we are pleased to be able to present this extraordinary body of work in the park and gallery. The early works, in their use of skin bronze or pigment rubbed into lead, reveal the importance to Dalwood of surface and texture. There is an obvious fascination with material and the processes of construction and creation. By 1957 the representational figures that populated his work of the early 1950s were abandoned and he began working in aluminium on "sculptures best described as mysterious objects." The very earliest abstract sculptures were reliefs in which the forms remained to an extent representational, such as Relief: Growing (1957). Norbert Lynton cites the St Ives Art School as an influence on Dalwood in his use of the landscape and nature as a source for gestural abstraction. The sculptor was indeed a frequent visitor to St Ives and had briefly worked for Barbara Hepworth in 1950. Another key influence was the painter Alan Davie, whose interest in primitive cultures is echoed in a sculpture such as Signs (1959), which recalls both pre-history and modern art. By the mid 1960s Dalwood was increasingly preoccupied by the particular human and social connotations of architecture and landscape. As Jon Wood notes in his essay accompanying this show, "Many of Dalwood’s sculptures seem compellingly caught in this uncertain space between landscape and sculpture. They are never simply scale models or maquettes, rather they seem to function as aide-mémoire objects, reconstructing the memories of places and giving tentative shape to their material and emotional lives. Inspired by intuitive recollections of furrow and plateaux, a valley becomes a dip for a paper weight-sized erratic boulder. Whilst indebted to the landscape, these landscape objects don’t wall us in nor bind us to it, rather they seem only to want to hold our imaginations, memories and experiences briefly - mediating our contemplative thoughts and heightening our associations – before sending them back on their way to the world and to ourselves."
For further information and images, please contact Briony Biles or Victoria Avery on 01980 862244.
