Figure Totem Beast: | Tate Britain

Tate Britain Exhibition

Figure Totem Beast: Sculpture in Britain in the 1950s

29 October 2018 – 4 February 2019

Bernard Meadows, Startled Bird 1955. Tate. © The estate of Bernard Meadows.

The uncompromising sculpture that emerged in Britain after the Second World War

Reflecting the anxieties of the Cold War, artists used new processes and materials to make work that was often uncompromising, immediate and brutal. One critic described it as a ‘Geometry of Fear’.

This exhibition in the Duveen Galleries features younger artists including Lynn Chadwick, Elizabeth Frink and Eduardo Paolozzi alongside older artists such as Jacob Epstein and Henry Moore. It also shows how the approach taken by the young British artists can be measured against the work of international artists. This includes entries to a competition to design a monument to the ‘Unknown Political Prisoner’ in 1953.