Denis Mitchell (1912-1993)

Denis Mitchell was an assistant to Barbara Hepworth from 1949-59 and a prominent member of the St Ives group from the late 1940s. It was with Ben Nicholson's financial support that Mitchell first started using bronze in 1959 which Mitchell saw as 'another big milestone in my development as a sculptor' (see Exhibition catalogue, Festival Exhibition of Sculpture by Denis Mitchell, Glynn Vivian Gallery and Museum, Swansea, 1979, p.4). Taut Form is part of a series of rising vertical works in which Mitchell exploits the qualities of polished bronze surfaces to explore the interplay of light on the surface and the balance of line and curve.

Heron wrote of the nature of Mitchell's bronzes:

'A Mitchell is a form, usually a single, rather stream-lined form enclosed as it were by a single skin - but a skin or surface which weaves and bends and buckles and stretches' (see Exhibition catalogue, Denis Mitchell Sculptor, Penwith Galleries, St. Ives, 1992, p. 13).