Geoffrey Clarke (b. 1924)

'Beauty, truth and goodness are constantly sought. Often, however, with physical senses and emotions only, to the exclusion of the soul ... From the earliest times man used symbolic forms for things most essential to him, worshipping them and the mysterious source from which they came' (Geoffrey Clarke, 1952).

Inspired by Klee, Picasso's iron sculptures and botanical drawings that he had seen at the Natural History Museum, Clarke created a new visual language to explore the relationships between God, man and nature. In both his etchings and sculptures of 1950, Clarke's figures are transformed into organic abstracts as stalk-like buds branch off from the stemmed torsos, vividly portrayed in Clarke's 1950 etching, Man, which closely relates to the present work.