welded copper sheet and copper wire on a wood base
48.3 cm
Further information »
Young Girl, 1951
Provenance:
with Curt Valentin Gallery, New York
Exhibition History:
New York, Curt Valentin Gallery, 1955 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 6);
Woking, The Lightbox, 2D:3D – Discover the Art of Sculpture: Sculpture & Sculptors’ Drawings from The Ingram Collection, 1 February – 1 March 2008;
London, Sotheby’s, Sculpture and Sculptors’ Drawings from The Ingram Collection, 10 – 21 January 2011;
London, Pangolin Gallery, Exorcising the Fear, 11 January – 3 March 2012;
Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: Diamond Jubilee Exhibition, 6 March – 15 April 2012;
Norwich, The Sainsbury Centre, UEA, Alberto Giacometti: A Line through Time, 23 April – 29 August 2016;
Hastings, Jerwood Gallery, Century: 100 Modern British Artists, 23 October 2016 – 8 January 2017;
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Land | Sea | Life: A British Art Collection, 20 October 2017 – 17 February 2018;
Sheffield, Museums Sheffield, Darkness into Light, 20 October 2018 – 13 January 2019;
Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada, Alberto Giacometti: A Line through Time, 16 June – 29 September 2019
Literature:
Margaret Garlake, Sculpture of Reg Butler, Henry Moore Foundation, 2006 (no. 96, p. 131, RB73)
After an initial career in architecture in the 1930s, Reg Butler began sculpting in 1944. As a conscientious objector during the Second World War, Butler became a blacksmith and this experience can be seen in his forged, cast and welded sculptures produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This delicately welded figure is a good illustration of what Butler described as ‘knitting with steel’ and is closely related to works he exhibited at the 1952 Venice Biennale.
