Dame Elisabeth Frink, R.A. (1930-1993)

Sarah Kent comments, 'During the war Elisabeth Frink used to watch the crippled planes crash down in the fields near her home and rush out to claim bits of wreckage, while falling has been a recurring nightmare since childhood. Falling Man (1961) plummets vertically down from the sky, one spindly arm outstretched to break his fall. This imaginative sculpture, depicting the moment before the deadly impact, literally turns heroism on its head. He is a victim, one feels, of inadequate preparation and poor equitment rather than of enemy fire' (A Bestiary for our time The Sculpture of Elisabeth Frink, reproduced in B. Robertson, op. cit., p. 58).