CUMBRIA.- Although highly respected throughout his career, Lynn Chadwick (1914-2003), has not had a retrospective at a public gallery in Britain since his show at the Tate in 2004, the year after his death.

This exhibition seeks to reaffirm Chadwick’s status as a significant artist in post-war Britain. Comprising more than 50 works, including mobiles, small and large-scale sculptures, drawings, prints and photographs, this show will demonstrate the range and quality of Chadwick’s output, from the earliest abstract mobiles and extraordinary human/beast/machine hybrid metal constructions of the 1950s and 1960s, through to the imposing, monumental figures of his late period. The Lakeland Arts Trust worked closely with the Chadwick Estate and Osborne Samuel Gallery to secure a number of works from private collections, some of them rarely seen in public before.

The intimate exhibition spaces at Abbot Hall, with its superb collection of post-war British art, provide the perfect context for the primal, pulsating forms of Chadwick’s early and mid-career. The sculptor’s large-scale works will be given special prominence both in the grand, Georgian entrance hall at Abbot Hall as well as, more dramatically, outside at Blackwell, the Arts & Crafts House, overlooking Lake Windermere. Here, the rectangular lawns will serve as a platform for Chadwick’s powerful large-scale figures, whose towering majestic forms will be viewed against the magnificent backdrop of the Lake District fells. The beautiful Arts & Crafts interiors at Blackwell will provide a unique setting for the domestic-scaled late-period sculpture by Chadwick, completing what promises to be a spectacular journey through the career of this remarkable artist.

‘Chadwick brought an exciting and innovative approach to the construction of his sculptures, working with welded metal to create dramatic and distinctive forms underpinned by a brilliant sense of design. His sculptures were created entirely by instinct without pre-planning, giving them a wonderful vitality that is universally appealing and engaging. These are forms whose physical power and primal intensity demand to be experienced in the flesh. This exhibition presents a brilliant opportunity for existing admirers and newcomers to Chadwick’s work alike to witness first-hand the evolution of one of the most important sculptors of the twentieth century.’
Nick Rogers, Curator, Lakeland Arts Trust.