Beschreibung:

λ Robert Clatworthy (British 1928-2015) Head III Bronze Stamped with initials and numbered 2/9 (to reverse of neck) Height: 38cm (14¾ in.) Conceived in 1964. Robert, son of Ernest, a railwayman, and his wife, Gladys (nee Jugaler), was born in Bridgwater, Somerset. Towards the end of the 1940's, after a period in national service, Clatworthy attended Chelsea School of Art, London, where he was taught by Bernard Meadows He also began an enduring friendship with Elisabeth Frink, whose work he continued to praise even when she later eclipsed him. In the early 50s Clatworthy had an important break, being taken on as an assistant by Henry Moore who gave him a surprising degree of creative latitude. Moore also persuaded him to join the Slade School in preference to the Royal College of Art, a decision that he is said to have regretted, though it did not hinder his early success. The young Clatworthy was extrovert, even charismatic. In 1954 he married the actress Pamela Gordon, the daughter of the musical performer Gertrude Lawrence, while also making rapid advances into the West End art scene. As a rising star at the Hanover Gallery he showed his bronzes of bulls, cats and heads, whose textured surfaces express his rapid handling of the quick-drying plaster from which they were cast. His heads were likened to Frank Auerbach's highly textured canvases but realised in three dimensions. Later, in 1965, he exhibited at the Waddington Galleries his austere standing and walking figures, which evoke Alberto Giacometti and Germaine Richier In the mid-50s the critic David Sylvester who was also close to Clatworthy's friend and drinking partner Francis Bacon described his output as "the best thing I have seen by any English sculptor younger than Henry Moore". However, even at the height of his commercial success, he believed in following his own rhythms rather than the demands of the art market, and he eventually fell out with his fashionable dealers over their requests for constant production.