Can Lynn Chadwick finally escape the 1950?

Lynn Chadwick was born 100 years ago in London, and died in 2003 at his Gloucestershire home, Lypiatt Park, where he is buried in the Pinetum. He was one of the great names of 20th-century sculpture, not just in England but recognised and celebrated internationally, too. He first came to prominence in the 1950s, and the aura of that decade clung to him for the remainder of his career. He was included in the 1952 Venice Biennale with seven other sculptors (including Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler and Eduardo Paolozzi), when Herbert Read coined the phrase ‘geometry of fear’ to describe their work. In conjuring up this postwar angst, Read spoke of an ‘iconography of despair’ and ‘collective guilt’. Chadwick’s spiky, semi-organic, semi-abstract forms seemed to embody these qualities, and when he won the coveted International Prize at Venice in 1956, he looked to be shaping up as the natural successor to Henry Moore.