2025 marks 40 years since Elisabeth Frink opened her first major retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts in London – incidentally the first solo exhibition of a female artist in the institution’s history. In fact, in the same year, she rejected the offer to become the first female president of the RA, preferring to be thought of simply as an artist, rather than a public figure. To mark the anniversary of this landmark in British art history, Messums are presenting for sale Soldier’s Head IV (1965), which was shown in the 1985 RA exhibition, alongside a series of exceptional works from within the same timeframe as that of the RA exhibition (1952-1984).
Frink was an artist who never kowtowed to authority or did what was superficially expected of her. Her oeuvre stands out in the late 20th century as a wholly independent exploration of human and animal nature, executed in the artist’s idiosyncratic brand of figuration. Her work has always spoken to the fractiousness of the contemporary world and explores humanity’s innate capacity for brutality, betrayal and hubris, as well as its fundamental fragility (both physical and emotional), our longing for freedom, and our potential for goodness, authenticity and heroism. Frink‘s work epitomised the spirit of the ‘geometry of fear’, which speaks as much to the anxieties of today as those of the post-war era.
War and conflict were subjects of particular importance for Frink. Her experience of living through the horrors of the Second World War instilled in her a lifelong concern for humanitarian issues (she later became a fervent supporter of Amnesty International) and recurring dreams of dark shapes rushing past her; ‘big monstrous things, sometimes with a man in them’. She believed that humanity was entering a new era of brutality, one that was ‘morally numb’, but commented that her concern was ‘not that mankind is any worse than it was: it is just that it is as bad as it was.’ For Frink, agency and free will were qualities that defined humanity; she believed Good and Evil to be a choice that we make, and that every action has a consequence for others and ourselves. Though rarely perceived as overtly political, Frink’s work nevertheless carries a clear message: that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
Over the past 8 years, Messums ORG have become one of the leading authorities on Frink and the foremost dealers in her work. In 2019, the gallery saved her Woolland studio from demolition, acquiring the remarkable building and its contents and arranging for them to be carefully dismantled and reconstructed in Wiltshire. The gallery has since hosted several major exhibitions of Frink’s work, including ‘A Place Apart, the resurrection of the Elisabeth Frink Studio’ (Messums West, 2020), ‘Man is an Animal’ (Messums West, 2021) and ‘Breathing New Life: The Elisabeth Frink Woolland Studio Reimagined’ (Messums London, 2023).
“Frink’s manifestation of thoughts and humanity, evident in her sculptural output, presents a way of thinking that is as relevant today in understanding and engaging with brutality.”
– Johnny Messum, Director
Artworks in the exhibition include:
Plant Head, 1963
Bronze
H: 76 cm
Elisabeth Frink’s Plant Head (1963) is, in many ways, a standout work in her oeuvre. Indeed, very little is known about the piece and there is no known instance of Frink herself discussing it in any depth. However, the sculpture was created in a crucial period for the artist – a time when she made, in her own words, some of her most ‘personally important’, (and now most celebrated) sculptures that she regarded as the culmination of her work to date. It was a time of experimentation, which saw her create Dying King (1963), Judas (1963), First Man (1964) the first Soldier’s Heads (1963-5) and the Carapace series (1963-4), amongst others. But Plant Head is arguably the furthest the artist ventured into abstraction, bearing little resemblance to any recognisable subject. Yet, one can arguably read an indication of the human form in its broadly pear-shaped appearance, punctuated by careful incisions and subtle moulding. At its base is a crease that suggests buttocks, which traces up the figure’s ‘back’, indicating a spine. At its top is a curious feature not seen in any other Frink sculpture: a detachable leaf form, screwed into the main body of the sculpture with a threaded bar (perhaps the plant head of the title?).
However, the piece is not entirely separate from her other works. Plant Head was sculpted at a time when Frink was experimenting with the possibilities of the head as a subject on its own, and coincided with a fixation on fossilised and biomorphic forms as well as anthropomorphism and metamorphosis, suggesting humanity’s intrinsic connection to nature. In other contemporaneous works, such as Fish Head (1963), Soldier’s Head (1963), and the Carapace series (1963-4), she explored the notion of the head as a vessel, in which human and animal life force was contained, almost like a seed. This simplification of her subject matter possibly derived from Frink’s longstanding interest in the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, whom she admired above almost all others. Rodin’s ability to capture the sensibility and emotions of a whole being in a single body part was a trait she particularly admired, and sought to emulate in her own sculpted heads. Plant Head is a key step along Frink’s artistic journey of formal discovery, pushing the boundaries of representation and figuration, to which she remained steadfastly committed throughout her career.
Soldier’s Head II, 1965
Bronze
H: 40 cm
Edition 5 of 6
Soldier’s Head IV, 1965
Bronze
38.1 x 22.9 x 38.1 cm
Edition 4 of 6
“From the 1960s, Elisabeth Frink’s work began to change. With her divorce from her first husband in 1963 and the rise of Anthony Caro and the new generation of abstract sculptors he ushered in, Frink began to feel increasingly alienated from the British artworld (a feeling that ultimately led her to remove her family and her studio to the South of France). Frink’s break from British art also appeared to stimulate a shift in her work, which began to express her personal philosophies more clearly. Whereas the first half of Frink’s career can be interpreted a reflection and exploration of a post-war existentialist milieu of anxiety surrounding the dangerous potential of human freedom, then the second was marked by an apparent realisation that it was not freedom, but humanity’s denial of this defining quality, that had dangerous consequences for human morality. Frink believed that, after the liminality of the post-war era, the world was entering a new dark age of human brutality, an epoch which was ‘morally numb’. For an artist whose primary concern was humanitarian ethics, now, more than any other, was a time for heroes. Frink’s work was highly literary in its origins and she explained that, although “not the slightest bit interested in other peoples’ myths”, “what I think I’m doing is creating my own myths”. She had, from a young age, been preoccupied with the idea of heroism, but Frink’s experiences during the war and subsequent concern for humanitarian issues problematised the traditional notions of heroism with which she had grown up. However, with her transition in the early ‘60s, from an ostensibly pessimistic, towards a more hopeful study of humanity in her work, the artist embarked on a personal quest to define her quintessential existential hero.
…
In the mid-1960s, Frink produced a series of heads that re-examined the artist’s first ‘heroic’ subject: the warrior. Frink’s early warriors from the 1950s were celebrations of the heroic and courageous. Since she was a child, the military disposition had seemed to her a glamorous one, and many of her romantic relationships were with ex-servicemen. However, from 1963, Frink’s military figures were re-labelled as ‘soldiers’; a subtle change but a crucial one, as it indicates a development in the artist’s sagacious interpretation of the nature of heroism. The word ‘warrior’ conjures up connotations of impassioned bravery. Warriors are individuals who choose to fight and rely on their own experience. A soldier, on the other hand, kills because they are told to do so. Their individual morality does not come into the equation as they are, by the nature of their profession, stripped of their individuality, anonymised, regimented and mechanised – placed in a martial machine that’s only function is to follow the directives of others. What better personification of Sartrian ‘bad faith’ and its destructive consequences could there be?
This Frink archetype of bad faith had its first iteration in Soldier, 1963. Then followed Assassins I and II, Small Soldier’s Head, Soldier’s Head and Soldier’s Head I, II, III and IV. These works demonstrate that Frink’s intellectual step change also brought a stylistic evolution to her work as, from the 1960s, she focussed primarily on two formats in her sculpture: the bust and the full-length male nude. Like her artistic hero, Auguste Rodin, Frink believed a sculptor should be able to express any human emotion in a single body part. Only
then could a work of art truly represent authentic human feeling. For Frink, the most effective vehicle for this was the human head. But, whereas her earlier Warrior’s Head from 1954 is turned on its strong neck, glaring out with purpose from beneath his helm, the Soldier’s Heads are pathetic, mutilated and vulnerable, “all traces of nobility and heroic ancestry gone” as they look blankly into the distance, their mouths slightly open, in direct contrast to the Warrior’s pursed lips. Frink described these fallen heroes as seeming “shell-shocked or brain damaged … Incapable of independent thought or moral action”, “so personifying the brutalising stupidity of war”. Frink’s description of her Soldiers reveals her belief that brutality, that state of moral collapse so often demonstrated by Mankind, was not an inherent quality but a moral choice. By living an inauthentic life, blinded by bad faith, and rejecting the free will that defines humanity, one disconnects one’s morality, creating a situation in which brutality may prevail. This was the danger Frink saw in dictatorships and all-consuming ideologies such as fascism, communism and even her own Catholicism. Sarah Kent perceptively noted that after Frink’s soldiers, “the ambiguity of war and our concept of heroism begins to become more evident in her sculpture”. Indeed, it is clear from her subsequent works that, for Frink, heroism now meant an active stance against brutality, and her heroes were paragons of personal authenticity, those who exercised their free will for positive ends, whatever the consequences for themselves, standing up for their morality in the hope of communal betterment.”1
1 W. Wright, ‘Bad Faith’: Existentialism and the Art of Elisabeth Frink, University of Warwick (2022), pp. 53-56.
This particular cast of Soldier’s Head IV was exhibited in Frink’s landmark retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1985 (the first solo exhibition of a female artist in the institution’s history).
Winged Beast, 1961
Charcoal on paper
76 x 56 cm
The bird is one of Elisabeth Frink’s most iconic motifs. Although never overtly anthropomorphic, the artist stated that her animal forms always related in some way to human experience. The bird was a symbol of flight, which the Frink used as a metaphor for human freedom. The fragility of the bird’s anatomy similarly related to the physical and emotional fragility of humankind, and the aggression that can be perceived in the pointed shapes of beaks, talons or wings, an indication of the power that birds have in their potential to cause harm.
Although Frink’s early birds were allied to her more realist early style, by the late 1950s, she had begun to experiment with distortion and minimalism, until, in sculptures such as the ‘Harbinger Bird’ (1961), ‘Winged Beast’ (1962), and the ‘Mirage’ series (1967-9), she had ‘reduced the animal form’, in the words of art historian Edwin Mullins, ‘to a rather evil looking pair of wire cutters’, antediluvian creatures stalking the earth in search of pray. This early ‘Winged Beast’ drawing from 1961 represents the moment when Frink’s style began to evolve into a bolder, more pointed examination of human and animal behaviour.
Frink used drawing as a means of exploring abstract ideas and concepts. Her works on paper were never directly related to actual sculptures, which she might produce years later; however, they foreshadow the forms which she later worked up into three-dimensions, and are the closest insight one can get into her feverish and unique thought processes.
Frink was an extremely accomplished draftsman. She believed drawing was the most important part of an artist’s practice; the foundation of everything one does. She drew quickly and spontaneously, and formed her imagery largely from her imagination, inspired by things she had seen sometimes years before. Although she sketched regularly, producing a great many drawings, most of Frink’s works on paper do not survive – destroyed by the artist. The few that she signed and exhibited represent the most prescient and personally important pieces to her, which she felt worthy of releasing into the world.
Frink’s drawings are nearly always executed in charcoal and pencil on the same thin A2 paper. She routinely filled the space with the image, as though her subjects are attempting to break out of the constraints of their support. This sense of containment is key, and can be felt in her sculpture, also – particularly in her heads, which she described as ‘vessels’ for the soul of the subject, which was perennially attempting to erupt from the surface of the bronze. The feeling of containment is further enhanced by the choice of frame, with its thin profile that acts to hem in the figure.
Falling Birdman, 1963
Charcoal on paper
76 x 56 cm
One of Elisabeth Frink’s philosophical preoccupations was the notion of humanity’s propensity towards hubris. Although she claimed that her ‘birdman’ archetype of the 1960s was unrelated to the mythological story of Icarus, it nevertheless carries a similar message: that one’s choices can lead to one’s demise. It is a poignant message derived from the artist’s experience of the Second World War – which deeply affected her for the rest of her life – and her subsequent interest in the existentialist philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, which she first encountered as a student at Chelsea School of Art in the early 1950s.
This ‘Birdman’ drawing from 1963 falling right in the middle of the artist’s preoccupation with the subject and is of particular interest because of its relationship to no less than four major archetypes in Frink’s oeuvre: the birdman, the warrior, and the spaceman and the martyr.
Frink said that the year 1963-4 was a key year for her, as the works she produced at this time represented the culmination of her work to that point. Her early work had idolised the figure of the warrior, inspired by her father, a cavalry officer, whom she hero-worshipped. As a child, Frink fetishised military subjects, inspired by the glamour of uniforms and thoughtless bravery. However, after the war, which left her, in her own words, ‘emotionally disturbed’, she began to see war as the ultimate expression of evil and the warrior as a tragic pawn in the game of politics and brutality. In this drawing, the figure wears a helmet reminiscent of that adorning the head of her ‘Warrior’ sculpture of 1954, yet the contrast between the two is stark. Whereas the 1954 sculpture is strong in physique and stance, boldly stepping forward in defiance of fear, the figure in the drawing appears thin, naked and helpless, much like the ‘Birdman’ sculptures of the late 1950s and early 60’s, falling or spinning out of control, plummeting to earth. The ‘Birdmen’ were partially inspired by the famous French stunt performer, Léo Valentin, who died in May 1956, falling 9,000 ft from an aeroplane, strapped to shattered wooden wings and a parachute that failed to open. A real-life Icarus. Frink’s interest in the subject of human fragility and our uncanny ability to place ourselves in situations of our own making in which we have no control over our faits was intensified by her awareness of the acceleration of the international ‘space race’, and the first human space flight conducted by the Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin in 1963. For Frink, the idea of humans floating in the vast unknowable darkness of space was the perfect metaphor for the ultimate solitude of humankind and our persistent pushing of the boundaries of the natural order. The final key detail in the work is the cruciform position of the figure. In 1962, Frink was commissioned to make a crucifix for Basil Spence’s lectern in Coventry Cathedral. There followed a series of works on the theme of Christ and the notion of existential martyrdom, which began to dominate her work throughout the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.
Frink used drawing as a means of exploring abstract ideas and concepts. Her works on paper were never directly related to actual sculptures, which she might produce years later; however, they foreshadow the forms which she later worked up into three-dimensions, and are the closest insight one can get into her feverish and unique thought processes.
Frink was an extremely accomplished draftsman. She believed drawing was the most important part of an artist’s practice; the foundation of everything one does. She drew quickly and spontaneously, and formed her imagery largely from her imagination, inspired by things she had seen sometimes years before. Although she sketched regularly, producing a great many drawings, most of Frink’s works on paper do not survive – destroyed by the artist. The few that she signed and exhibited represent the most prescient and personally important pieces to her, which she felt worthy of releasing into the world.
Frink’s drawings are nearly always executed in charcoal and pencil on the same thin A2 paper. She routinely filled the space with the image, as though her subjects are attempting to break out of the constraints of their support. This sense of containment is key, and can be felt in her sculpture, also – particularly in her heads, which she described as ‘vessels’ for the soul of the subject, which was perennially attempting to erupt from the surface of the bronze. The feeling of containment is further enhanced by the choice of frame (original from the 1960s), with its thin profile that acts to hem in the figure.
