DAME ELISABETH FRINK, R.A. (1930-1993)

Sir Nicholas Goodison commented: ‘Besides her preoccupation with men in flight or falling in the 1950s and 1960s, Frink was struck by photographs of Valentin, the French bird man with his helmet, goggles, flying suit and artificial wings. Frink said in the interview with Bryan Robertson, that the bird men and spinning men were 'the nearest I got at that time to subjective ideas or the concept of man involved in some kind of activity other than just being' (B. Robertson, Elisabeth Frink Sculpture: Catalogue Raisonné, Salisbury, 1984, p. 37). Birdman seems like a fighter pilot fused with elements of his plane, the inadequacy of his apparent wings giving him a vulnerability (ibid., p. 58). Writing a review of the show of Frink's work at Waddington's in 1963, James Burr described her sculptures as a 'tactful fusion of Germaine Richier's loose broken surface textures, which glorifies exuberant handling, with the Rodinesque sensuality and the spiky attenuated standing figures of Giacometti', and drew attention to Giacometti's big feet and elongated legs - clearly a reference to this sculpture of Frink's which illustrated the review. He suggested that the lopped arms might hark back to fragments of humanist sculpture ('Art School Manners', Apollo, December 1963, p. 498).’