NORWICH.- As part of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival 2018, the Sainsbury Centre welcomed three monumental ‘Beasts’ by leading British sculptor Lynn Chadwick (1914 – 2003) which have taken up residence in the Sculpture Park until 31 August 2019. This project forms part of the 40th anniversary celebrations for the Sainsbury Centre. Generously lent by the Chadwick Estate and organised in association with Blain|Southern, the Beasts have been situated in the east end garden immediately outside the east façade of the Sainsbury Centre building.

The three large scale sculptures, Crouching Beast II, Beast Alerted I and Lion I, conceived in 1990, are animals captured in various states of dynamic action. Their stretching, crouching or resting poses are described through faceted, geometric planes of welded stainless-steel. The Beasts, completed late in Chadwick’s career, continue a theme he had first begun to explore in the early 1950s - figures and animals caught in various states of movement. He described this as capturing ‘attitude,’ saying “I would call it attitude…the way that you can actually make something almost talk by the way the neck is bent, or the attitude of the head”.

Having trained as an architectural draughtsman, Chadwick was throughout his career particularly sensitive to the role of public sculpture in the context of modern architecture. He made two works for the Festival of Britain and his work was positioned in the public spaces of post-war cities and New Towns. For many architects of the 1950s and 60s Chadwick’s work was seen to perfectly complement the striking modern style of much new public architecture and urban space.

This project situates Chadwick’s Beasts, in the context of the both Norman Foster’s Sainsbury Centre, one of Britain’s foremost steel space frame buildings, and Denys Lasdun’s monumental, Brutalist campus architecture for the University of East Anglia. The Beasts brilliantly reflect a spirit of architectural experimentation in both the forms of their construction and the use of steel as a material for sculpture.

The project also continues the momentum built with the installation of Anthony Gormley’s 3x ANOTHER TIME and Tatlin’s Tower in 2017. The Sculpture Park consists of 320 acres of natural and the built environment on the UEA campus and combines iconic architecture, art and nature in an outdoor space free for everyone to enjoy.

Lynn Chadwick was one of the leading British sculptors of post-war Britain, known primarily for metal works often inspired by the human form and the natural world, but which also at times seemed close to abstraction. He was born in Barnes, London in 1914 and died at his home Lypiatt Park, Gloucestershire, in 2003, aged 88.

Chadwick was launched on to the international stage as one of a new generation of British sculptors exhibiting at the British Pavilion of the 1952 Venice Biennale. Four years later, representing Great Britain at the 1956 Venice Biennale, where he won the coveted International Prize for Sculpture ahead of established artists such as Alberto Giacometti.

Abandoning the stone and wood carving methods of pre-war sculpture, Chadwick’s approach to making sculpture was instinctual; engaging in the physical activity of making without preliminary drawings, where practical improvisation resulted in works imbued with a unique intensity and presence.

“It seems to me”, Chadwick said, “that art must be the manifestation of some vital force coming from the dark, caught by the imagination and translated by the artist’s ability and skill. Whatever the final shape, the force behind is... indivisible.” Listener, 1954

Recent solo exhibitions include; Lynn Chadwick, The Rotunda, One Exchange Square, Hong Kong, CH (2016); Lynn Chadwick, Skulturenpark Wuppertal, DE (2015); Lynn Chadwick, Retrospective for Two Gardens, Bardini Gardens and Boboli Gardens, Florence, IT (2015); Lynn Chadwick: Retrospectives, Blain|Southern London, Berlin and Blain Di|Donna New York, (2014); Lynn Chadwick RA, Royal Academy of Arts Courtyard, London, UK (2014).

Lynn Chadwick’s sculptures feature in the collections of most major museums, including MoMA, New York; Tate Gallery, London; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.