bronze with a dark brown patina and polished glasses
61 cm
signed and numbered ‘4/6’ on the shoulder
Further information »
Goggle Head, 1969
Exhibition History:
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, Canary Wharf, Bronze Sculptures from The Ingram Collection, 16 September – 15 November 2013;
Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: The Impact of War, 15 October 2014 – 4 January 2015;
Somerset, Hestercombe Gallery, A Personal Passion, 25 April – 5 July 2015;
Aberystwyth, Aberystwyth Arts Centre, The Human Face, 27 January – 12 March 2016;
London, Business Design Centre, London Art Fair Museum Partner, Ten Years – A Century of Art, 18 – 22 January 2017;
Woking, The Lightbox, In Their Own Words: Artists’ Voices from The Ingram Collection, 20 May – 30 July 2017;
Aylesbury, Bucks County Museum, Elisabeth Frink, 10 February – 21 April 2018;
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Elisabeth Frink: Fragility and Power, 22 June – 29 September 2018;
Norwich, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Elisabeth Frink: Humans and Other Animals, 13 October 2018 – 24 February 2019;
Milton Keynes, MK Gallery, The Lie of the Land, 16 March – 26 May 2019;
London, Royal Academy, Ancestors, 7 September 2019 – 19 January 2020;
Woking, The Lightbox, Collector’s Favourites (online exhibition), 1 June – 1 September 2020
Literature:
Bryan Robertson (intro.), Elisabeth Frink Sculpture Catalogue Raisonne, Harpvale, Salisbury, 1984 (another cast illustrated, no. 181);
A. Ratuszniak (ed.), Elisabeth Frink Catalogue Raisonne of Sculpture 1947-1993, London, 2013 (another cast illustrated p. 116, no. FCR210)
Frink started creating her famous series of Goggle Heads in the late 1960s, and they were a new and original manifestation of her lifelong preoccupation with the violence and aggression of man. Frink said that her Goggle Heads were inspired by news reports of the colonial wars in North Africa, and by a photograph of Moroccan General Mohammad Oufkir wearing dark glasses. Oufkir was a powerful figure in Morocco during the 1960s and 1970s and led government-sponsored efforts to repress political protest through killings, show trials, and “disappearances”, notably that of Medhi Ben Barka, the leader of the Moroccan Independence Movement. Frink described Oufkir’s “blind stare” as “extraordinarily sinister” and she felt compelled to create images of him: “These goggle heads became for me a symbol of evil and destruction in North Africa and, in the end, everywhere else”.
