Dame Elizabeth Frink

Dame Elisabeth Jean Frink (14 November 1930 – 18 April 1993) was an English sculptor and printmaker. Her ''Times'' obituary noted the three essential themes in her work as "the nature of Man; the 'horseness' of horses; and the divine in human form".

Early life

Elisabeth Frink was born in November 1930 at her paternal grandparents' home The Grange in Great Thurlow, a village and civil parish in the St Edmundsbury district of Suffolk, England. Her parents were Ralph Cuyler Frink and Jean Elisabeth (née Conway-Gordon). Captain Ralph Cuyler Frink, was a career officer in the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards and among the men of the cavalry regiment evacuated from Dunkirk in the early summer of 1940. She was raised in a catholic household.

The Second World War, which broke out shortly before Frink's ninth birthday, provided context for some of her earliest artistic works. Growing up near a military airfield in Suffolk, she heard bombers returning from their internecine missions and on one occasion was forced to hide under a hedge to avoid the machine gun attack of a German fighter plane. Her early drawings, from the period before she attended arts school in London, have a powerful apocalyptic flavour: themes include wounded birds and falling men. During the course of the war Frink was evacuated with her mother and brother Tim to Exmouth, Devon where she attended Southlands Church of England School. When Southlands School was commandeered for the war effort in 1943 Frink became a full time pupil at The Convent of the Holy Family School.

Career

Frink studied at the Guildford School of Art (now the University for the Creative Arts) (1946–1949), under Willi Soukop, and at the Chelsea School of Art (1949–1953). She was part of a postwar group of British sculptors, dubbed the Geometry of Fear school, that included Reg Butler, Bernard Meadows, Kenneth Armitage and Eduardo Paolozzi. Frink's subject matter included men, birds, dogs, horses and religious motifs, but very seldom any female forms. ''Bird'' (1952; London, Tate), one of a number of bird sculptures, and her first successful pieces (also ''Three Heads and the Figurative Tradition'') with its alert, menacing stance, characterizes her early work. She created a bookrest in the form of an eagle, for the lectern of the new Coventry Cathedral, as well as a canopy for its Bishop's throne.

Although she made many drawings and prints, she is best known for her bronze outdoor sculpture, which has a distinctive cut and worked surface. This is created by her adding plaster to an armature, which she then worked back into with a chisel and surform. This process contradicts the very essence of "modeling form" established in the modeling tradition and defined by Rodin's handling of clay.

In the 1960s Frink's continuing fascination with the human form 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 male heads, known as the goggled heads. On returning to England, she focused on the male nude, barrel-chested, with mask-like features, attenuated limbs and a pitted surface, for example Running Man (1976; Pittsburgh, PA, Carnegie Mus. A.). Frink's sculpture, and her lithographs and etchings created as book illustrations, drew on archetypes expressing masculine strength, struggle and aggression. In 1984 she explained that she "focused on the male because to me he is a subtle combination of sensuality and strength with vulnerability".

The 1980s held capstones for Frink's career. In 1982, a new publishing firm proposed to produce a catalogue raisonné of all of her works to date; and the Royal Academy planned a retrospective of her life's work. The date of the retrospective, originally to be held in 1986, was moved forward a year due to space demands at the gallery, causing Frink some headaches due to her busy commissioned work schedule. In 1985 alone, she was committed to two major projects: a set of three figures for a corporate headquarters, one of which was a nearly male nude; and the other, a grouping entitled '' Dorset Martyrs'' for Dorchester, Dorset.

However, despite the potential for conflict, the retrospective was a success and spurred the art world to hold more exhibitions of Frink's worth, with four solo exhibitions and several group ones coming in the following year. Tirelessly, Frink continued to accept commissions and sculpt, as well as serve on advisory committees, meet art students who had expressed an interest in her work, and pursue other public commitments.

Having been elected a full Academician at the Royal Academy in 1979, there were moves to make the 54-year-old sculptor the first female president of the academy, Frink however did not want the post and it went instead to Roger de Grey.

Frink kept up this hectic pace of sculpting and exhibiting until early 1991, when an operation for cancer of the oesophagus caused an enforced break. However, short weeks later Frink was again creating sculptures and preparing for solo exhibitions. In September, she underwent further surgery. Again, Frink did not let this hold her back, proceeding with a planned trip for exhibitions to New Orleans

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