+ Expand

Artist or Maker: Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915)

+ Expand

Description: Three Studies for 'Red Stone Dancer', recto; three further studies, verso
brush and black ink
6 1/2 x 4 1/4 in. (16.5 x 10.8 cm.)
Executed in 1914.
3

+ Expand

Provenance: Dorothy Shakespeare, from whom acquired by Mrs A.E. Hunt.
with Jason & Rhodes, London, where purchased by the present owner in September 1998.

+ Expand

Notes: These studies relate to Red Stone Dancer, 1914 (Tate Gallery) (fig. 1). In the sculpture, Gaudier-Brzeska has simplified the forms to abstract shapes, combining his interest in artefacts he would have seen in the British Museum with an overall desire to convey movement through static form. The drawings demonstrate the fluidity of form that Gaudier's chosen medium of black ink allowed him.

Ezra Pound wrote about the sculpture, 'This is almost a thesis of his ideas upon the use of pure form. We have the triangle and circle asserted, labled almost, upon the face and right breast. Into these so-called "abstractions" life flows, the circle moves and elongates into the oval, it increases and takes volume in the sphere, or hemisphere of the breast. The triangle moves towards organism, it becomes a spherical triangle (the central life-form common to both Brzeska and Lewis). These two developed motifs works as themes in a fugue' (see E. Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, Milan, 1957, pp. 11-13).

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.