Elisabeth frinks biography

Sculptor and printmaker, born in Thurlow, Suffolk. She studied at Guildford School of Art, 1947–49, and then Chelsea School of Art, 1949–53, under Willi Soukop and Bernard Meadows. She taught at Chelsea School of Art, 1953–61, at St Martin’s School of Art, 1954–62, and at the Royal College of Art, 1965–67. Her first solo exhibition (following some early shows with the London Group) was at St George’s Gallery, London, 1955, and her first overseas exhibition was in 1959 at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York; she subsequently exhibited worldwide. She had a retrospective at the Royal Academy, 1985, and a memorial exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Bretton Hall, 1994. Frink was elected an Associate Royal Academician in 1972 and full RA in 1977; she was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors and was awarded the society’s Gold Medal for Sculpture in 1993. She was appointed CBE in 1969, and was made DBE in 1982 and Companion of Honour in 1992. Examples of her work are in the Tate and the Arts Council collection. Her work is figurative, consisting chiefly of men, animal and bird subjects, and including series such as the goggle heads, running men, horses and riders, etc. Public commissions include Wild Boar, 1957, Harlow New Town; Blind Beggar and Dog, 1957, Bethnal Green; Eagle Lectern, 1962, Coventry Cathedral; Paternoster, 1975, Paternoster Square, City of London; Horse and Rider 1975, New Bond Street, London; Standing Man, Walking Man and Running Man, 1985, WH Smith Headquarters, Swindon; and Water Buffaloes, 1986, Hong Kong. Her final work, the Risen Christ on the West Front of Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, was unveiled a week before her death from cancer on 18 April 1993. She was the subject of catalogues raisonné in 1984 and 2013 and an official biography in 1998.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Wat

Having begun her education at a convent in Exmouth, Frink studied at Guildford and Chelsea schools of art between 1947 and 1953, where Bernard Meadows and Willi Soukop were her tutors. She herself went on to teach at Chelsea (1953-60) and St Martin's School of Art (1955-7).

Frink achieved commercial success at a young age when, in 1952, Beaux Arts Gallery in London held her first major solo exhibition and the Tate Gallery purchased one work entitled 'Bird'. This marked the beginning of a highly acclaimed career in which Frink earned a reputation as one of Britain's most important post-war sculptors.

Frink's unique sculptural style is characterised by a rough treatment of the surface, so that each piece is richly embedded with the artist's creative process and personal impression. At the same time, these highly textured surfaces project the vitality of her subject, giving Frink's sculpture an almost abstract quality.

English sculptor and printmaker

Dame Elisabeth Jean FrinkCH DBE RA (14 November 1930 – 18 April 1993) was an English sculptor and printmaker. Her Times obituary noted the three essential themes in her work as "the nature of Man; the 'horseness' of horses; and the divine in human form".

Early life

Elisabeth Frink was born in November 1930 at her paternal grandparents' home The Grange in Great Thurlow, a village and civil parish in the St Edmundsbury district of Suffolk, England. Her parents were Ralph Cuyler Frink and Jean Elisabeth (née Conway-Gordon). Captain Ralph Cuyler Frink, was a career officer in the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards and among the men of the cavalry regiment evacuated from Dunkirk in the early summer of 1940. She was raised in a Catholic household.

The Second World War, which broke out shortly before Frink's ninth birthday, provided context for some of her earliest artistic works. Growing up near a military airfield in Suffolk, she heard bombers returning from their missions and on one occasion was forced to hide under a hedge to avoid the machine gun attack of a German fighter plane. Her early drawings, from the period before she attended arts school in London, have a powerful apocalyptic flavour: themes include wounded birds and falling men. During the course of the war Frink was evacuated with her mother and brother Tim to Exmouth, Devon where she attended Southlands Church of England School. When Southlands School was commandeered for the war effort in 1943 Frink became a full time pupil at The Convent of the Holy Family School.

Career

Frink studied at the Guildford School of Art (now the University for the Creative Arts) (1946–1949), under Willi Soukop, and at the Chelsea School of Art (1949–1953). She was part of a postwar group of British sculptors, dubbed the Geo

Dame Elisabeth Frink CH DBE RA was a British sculptor and printmaker.

Elisabeth Frink studied at the Guildford School of Art (1946-1949) and Chelsea School of Art (1949-1953). Frink’s subject matter varies from animals to male figures, where she explores their strengths and vulnerabilities as well as their relationship to one another. Growing up in the Suffolk countryside during the Second World War, Frink’s stark interpretation of conflict and post-war angst at the 1952 Venice Biennale aligned her practice with the ‘Geometry of Fear’ group including contemporaries Reg Butler, Bernard Meadows and Kenneth Armitage. That same year aged just 22, Frink held her first solo exhibition at London’s Beaux Arts Gallery, where London’s Tate Gallery acquired the bronze Bird for their permanent collection. This early imagery took the form of menacing ravens and vultures, which later morphed into hybrid ‘birdman’ sculptures, inspired by themes of flight and the soldiers she grew up around. Later animal sculptures of dogs and horses further explored man’s gentler relationship to nature, capturing a companionship and strength between them. Horses, in particular, became a seminal aspect of her practice. Depicted both in motion and standing still they feature alongside her male figures as trusted partners or as solitary beings, representing freedom and beauty.

A fascination with the human form and concept of masculinity also led to numerous works featuring barrel-chested men and male heads with mask-like features. Having felt that the female form was too traditional in its representation within art, Frink found that the male could instead be used as a presence far removed from the idealised portrayals of Western society. Her figures capture the complexities of the human condition in their physical forms as well as the energy and emotion under the surface.

Frink's sculptures a