Elisabeth Frink b.Suffolk 1930-1993 Dorset
The daughter of an army officer, Elisabeth Frink learnt to ride before she was four, shoot before she was five and was very much at home with the outdoor life.
She attended art school at Guildford and then Chelsea. In 1952, at the age of only 22 she held her first major exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery, London, from which the Tate purchased a bird sculpture. Her techique was to model, cast in plaster and then carve the plaster to achieve a tougher surface when the work was finally cast on bronze much as Henry Moore had done. Unlike Moore, however, she rarely worked with the female form. To Elisabeth Frink it was the male who represented a subtle combination of sensuality and strength with vulnerability. Men, dogs, horses and birds were to be the constant subject-matter throughout Frink’s career.
Frink’s graphic work followed the same themes, being executed with the same economy of means and feeling for surface texture that is to be found in her sculpture.