1965
Bronze with a brown patina
40 cm
Signed
Edition 5 of 6

Description

Conceived in Frink’s most prolific year, Soldier’s Head II continues and reinforces the artist’s strong anti-militant standing. Soldier’s Head II is a portrait of Frink’s second husband, Edward ‘Ted’ Pool, and demonstrates Frink’s direct engagement with the effects of war and conflict. Her father was a soldier at Dunkirk, and she recalls holidaying in Devon, witnessing combat in a nearby airfield, sheltering in bushes for safety. Pool was himself a solider that sustained severe combat wounds, rendered vividly in this sculpture in its broken nose, cauliflower ears and beaten brow. Pool’s large beard became incorporated into the form’s chin giving the work a non-traditional anti-ideal image, the intention was not to flatter but to confront. The sculpture is blunt and challenging, the soldier is not presented as a machine of war but as the shell-shocked man left behind. The work received high praise from critic Edwin Mullins stating, ‘These blunt representations of the hireling thug are in my view her most interesting yet’ (Edward Mullins, ‘Grown-Up Prodigies’, The Sunday Telegraph, 5 December, 1965). Soldier’s Head initiated ideas that developed into Frink’s seminal Goggle Heads resolving into the Tribute Heads a decade later.

Literature

Robertson, Elisabeth Frink Sculpture, Catalogue Raisonne, Salisbury, 1984, pp. 162-63, no. 118, another cast illustrated.

Ratuszniak (ed.) Elisabeth Frink Catalogue Raisonne of Sculpture 1947-1993, p. 95, no. FCR142, another cast illustrated.

Sarah Kent (ed.), Elisabeth Frink, Sculpture and Drawings 1952-1984, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985, p.13, cat.no.33, another cast illustrated.

Catalogue of the Ingram Collection, The Lightbox, 2009, p.40, another cast illustrated.

Exhibited

Hull, Ferens Art Gallery, Reflection: British Art in an Age of Change, 17 August 2019 – 5 January 2020, another cast exhibited.

Woking, The Lightbox, Elisabeth Frink: A Collector’s Passion, 13 October 2018 – 6 January 2019, another cast exhibited.

Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Elisabeth Frink: Fragility and Power, 22 June – 29 September 2018, another cast exhibited.

Bristol, RWA, Frink-Blow-Lawson, 16 December 2017 – 11 March 2018, another cast exhibited.

Somerset, Hestercombe Gallery, Shifting Ground, 11 November 2016 – 26 February 2017, another cast exhibited.

London, Royal College of General Practitioners, Health and the Body, 3 March – 29 May 2016, another cast exhibited.

Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: The Impact of War, 15 October 2014 – 4 January 2015, another cast exhibited.

Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: The Human Face, 22 July – 28 September 2008, another cast exhibited.

Woking, The Lightbox, 2D:3D – Discover the Art of Sculpture: Sculpture & Sculptors’ Drawings from The Ingram Collection, 1 February – 1 March 2008, another cast exhibited.

London, Beaux Arts, Frink: Sculpture, Drawings and Prints, 1998, another cast exhibited.

London, Royal Academy, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Drawings 1952-1984, 8 February-25 March 1985, cat.no.33, another cast exhibited.

London, Waddington Galleries I, II, III, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Prints and drawings from Chaucer, 11 October-4 November 1972, another cast exhibited.
London, Battersea Park, Sculpture in Battersea Park, May-September 1966, another cast exhibited.

London, Waddington Galleries, Elisabeth Frink, 1965, another cast exhibited.