Beschreibung:

Lynn Chadwick, R.A. Follow Teddy Boy and Girl II incised with the artist's signature and numbered 'Chadwick 1/4' lower front edge of the male figure; further incised with the foundry mark ‘Susse Fondeur Paris’ lower reverse edge of the female figure bronze 199.5 x 73 x 66.5 cm (78 1/2 x 28 3/4 x 26 1/8 in.) Conceived in 1957 and cast by Susse Fondeur, Paris, in 1961, this work is number 1 from an edition of 4.
Provenance Miguel Otero Silva, Venezuela Private Collection, Venezuela Exhibited London, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., Lynn Chadwick, November - December 1961, no. 2, n.p. (another example illustrated and exhibited ) New York, Knoedler Galleries, Lynn Chadwick, 3 - 28 January 1961, n.p. (another example illustrated and exhibited ) Literature Oberlin College Bulletin , 15/102, Winter 1958, p. 69 Les Beaux-Arts , 946 – 947, October 1961, p. 10 Charlotte Parry-Crooke, ed., Contemporary Artists with Photographs by Walia, London, 1979, n.p (another example illustrated) Martin H. Bush, Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art , Wichita, 1980, p. 29 (another example illustrated) Dennis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick. Sculptor, Oxford, 1990, no. 227, p. 150 (another example illustrated) Dennis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick. Sculptor , Aldershot, 2006, cat. no. 227, p. 130-131 (another example illustrated, p. 131) Lynn Chadwick. The Sculptures at Lypiatt Park, London, 2014, no. 84 (another example illustrated, p. 84) We are grateful to Dr Sarah Chadwick for her assistance with the cataloging of this work. Catalogue Essay A seminal theme in the British sculptor Lynn Chadwick’s oeuvre, Teddy Boy and Girl II is a defining three-dimensional masterpiece of post-war British sculpture. Encompassing a new modern aesthetic in a world rebuilding itself after the turmoil of the Second World War, the present work was commissioned by Venezuelan writer, journalist and politician Miguel Otero Silva, after viewing a smaller variation of the work at the 1957 to 1959 travelling exhibition Ten Young British Sculptors. The exhibition featured Chadwick’s sculptural work alongside a selection of artist contemporaries, namely Kenneth Armitage Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull Organised by the British Council, the exhibition began at Sao Paulo’s IV Biennial of the Museum of Modern Art, where Chadwick’s work was shown alongside the paintings of William Scott and Peter Lanyon The exhibition travelled to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santiago and Lima, finally concluding in Caracas. Housed in the collection of Otero Silva, a patron of Caracas’ Galería de Arte Nacional which opened in 1976, the present work is the first of the four works from the edition borne from Otero Silva’s commission and is the only work to include a base plate, making the work a rare and life size formulation of one of the artist’s key sculptural concerns: the Teddy Boy and Girl . Chadwick’s Teddy Boy and Girl formations can be traced throughout the great landmarks of the artist’s practice. Chadwick received the hors concours at the Sao Paulo IV Biennal, the first British artist to receive this accolade, whereby he exhibited a selection of works, which included Maquette III Teddy Boy and Girl. Following this travelling show, a cast from the present edition was exhibited at the artist’s self-titled exhibition at Marlborough Gallery, London, his largest grouping of works after his seminal exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1956. Winning the International Sculpture Prize at Venice in 1956 over Alberto Giacometti just one year prior to the conception of the present work, Chadwick established his artistic practice in the narrative of art history on a worldwide stage. As Alan Bowness expressed to the Observer in June 1956, in response to Chadwick’s exposure in Venice, 'Chadwick has been one of the revelations of the Biennale. Quite apart from the distinguished and highly original quality of his imagination, it is the beauty and sensitivity of execution that impresses. He may make use of the "creative accident" but the very sureness of his control makes most modern sculpture look simply incompetent by the side of his work. This Biennale award marks the emergence of Lynn Chadwick as a figure of international artistic importance' (Alan Bowness, 'The Venice Biennale,' Observer, 24 June 1956, in Dennis Farr, Lynn Chadwick, Tate, London, 2003, p. 44). In the lead up to his selecti