Lynn Chadwick, R.A. (1914-2003)

‘I believe that it is necessary for the artist to have feeling for the method in which he works, whatever his medium. I am pleased if the iron forms I make have a sort of organic reality, as if they were the logical expression of the materials which I use. I do not expect much vitality in my work unless this is so’ (L. Chadwick, quoted in exhibition catalogue, The New Decade: 22 European Painters and Sculptors, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1955).

Maquette II Moon of Alabama, forms part of a series of works which take their title from a song by Berthold Brecht, later covered by David Bowie and The Doors. Constructed from iron and composition, known as Stolit, a web of welded rods forms a geometric unit that is supported by three legs. Exposed rods jut out in a multitude of directions, as if marking out an invisible skin which protects the nucleus of the object. The structure itself references the Soviet satellite, Sputnik 1, which launched in the same year, initiating the ‘Space Age’.