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Artworks
Geoffrey Clarke 1924-2014
Complexities of Man, 1951Unique iron and stone sculpture135 x 41 x 35 cms
53 2/16 x 16 2/16 x 13 12/16 ins493SoldIn a text for the catalogue of the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1952, Herbert Read wrote of the qualities shared by a new generation of British sculptors:...In a text for the catalogue of the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1952, Herbert Read wrote of the qualities shared by a new generation of British sculptors: "These new images belong to the iconography of despair, or of defiance... Here are images of flight... of excoriated flesh, frustrated sex, the geometry of fear..."
"Their art is close to the nerves, nervous, wiry... They have seized Eliot's image of the Hollow Men... They have peopled the Waste Land with iron waifs."
In his article for Art News entitled Britain's New Iron Age Lawrence Alloway discussed Complexities of Man, quoting Geoffrey Clarke's statement about this work: "the base of the rods represent the physical ...the inner tops of the rods represent mental activities. Some are blocked meaning that some of the mental or physical senses have never been used."Provenance
The artist
Private collection
Purchased by the Tate Gallery, Summer 2003Exhibitions
Geoffrey Clarke, Gimpel Fils Gallery, 1952
New Aspects of British Sculpture, British Pavilion, XXVI Venice Biennale, 1952, (cat. 127, with wrong dimensions)
British Sculpture, British Council, USA tour, 1955
Henry Moore and the Geometry of Fear, James Hyman Gallery, 19 November 2002 - 18 January 2003
Geoffrey Clarke, Bury St. Edmunds Art Gallery, 2003
Literature
Hervert Read, New Aspects of British Sculpture, XXVI Venice Biennale, 1952.
Lawrence Alloway, 'Britain's new iron Age', Art News, Summer, 1953.Moore and the Geometry of Fear, James Hyman Gallery, London, 2002, (cat. 12), detail front cover and illustrated p.27.
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