February 2025 marks 40 years since Elisabeth Frink opened her first major retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts in London – the first solo exhibition of a female artist in the institution’s history. The same year, she turned down 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 the RA exhibition’s (1952-1984)
Frink’s work has always spoken to the fractious nature of the contemporary world. 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, from a young age, began creating artworks which explore humanity’s capacity for brutality, betrayal and hubris, as well as its innate fragility (both physical and emotional), our longing for freedom, and fundamental 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 remained important subjects for Frink. 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