Dame Elisabeth Frink (1930 – 1993)
Rolling Horse
Watercolour on paper
Signed by the artist, and inscribed ‘For Dick, 31 – 12 – 80’
25.5 x 40.8cm
Elisabeth Frink studied at the Guildford School of Art (1946–9) and with Bernard Meadows at the Chelsea School of Art (1949–53). She was linked with the post-war school of British sculptors, including Reg Butler, Bernard Meadows and Eduardo Paolozzi, though her work is distinguished by her commitment to naturalistic forms and themes. Frink’s range of subjects included men, birds, dogs, horses and religious motifs. She concentrated on bronze outdoor sculpture with a scarred surface created by repeatedly coating an armature with wet plaster; each coating is distressed and broken, eliminating detail and generalising form. In the 1960s Frink’s continuing fascination with flight was evident in a series of falling figures and winged men. While living in France from 1967 to 1970, she began a series of threatening, monumental, goggled male heads, and on returning to England, she began to focus on the male nude.
