WILLIAM TURNBULL
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Offer Waterman • London
‘To enter Turnbull’s world is to fly like a bird among branches or to swim under water among the inhabitants, mobile or stationary, of the sea.’ David Sylvester, 1950
Contents
Foreword
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William Turnbull: A State of Balance by Patrick Elliott
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Artists’ sketchbook Extracts from William Turnbull’s personal sketchbook, dated 1948. Selected by Polly Checker
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Steel & Stelae by Antony Gormley
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Available works: Plates Sculpture Paintings Works on paper
29 51 75
Available works: List
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Bibliography and Selected Exhibitions
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Acknowledgements
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Foreword
The artist in his studio, Hamilton Gardens, London, c.1955 with Head 2 and Head 3, both 1955
I am delighted to present William Turnbull: New Worlds, Words, Signs. It has been my privilege to represent the Estate of William Turnbull (1922 – 2012) since November 2015 and this exhibition of works, dating from 1949 – 1962, marks the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s work to be held at our gallery in Mayfair. I have been acquiring Bill’s work for over twenty years and I am fortunate that several of his most noteworthy sculptures have passed through my hands. His ‘hands on’ approach to the patination of sculpture is arguably unrivalled and his gifts as a painter parallel his extraordinary talent as a sculptor. It is paramount to acknowledge his place
Offer Waterman september 2017
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in the international art community. I hope that this exhibition and the accompanying catalogue will contribute to the growing recognition of one the most compelling and unique voices in 20th Century art. It has been my great pleasure collaborating with the artist’s sons, Alex and Johnny, in bringing together this fascinating selection of works. I would also like to give my thanks to those private collectors who have been kind enough to lend their works to the exhibition. Their generosity is much appreciated. Lastly, I would like to thank Polly Checker, the exhibition director, for her tireless effort and dedication to this project. I am thankful to her and everyone at the gallery.
William Turnbull: A State of Balance
by Patrick Elliott
‘Sculpture used to look “modern”; now we make objects that might have been dug up at any time during the past forty thousand years’ 1
1 William Turnbull in This is Tomorrow, exhibition catalogue, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1956, p.3
William Turnbull’s work resonates across cultural, geographical and historical divides and evades neat classification. His work would be equally at home in a museum of ancient artefacts as in a museum of contemporary art. He felt a stronger connection with Cycladic sculpture, 10,000-year-old pots and nonwestern art that he saw at the British Museum, than he did with Renaissance masterpieces by Raphael and Rembrandt at the National Gallery. His sensibility was closer to the American Abstract Expressionists, and later the American Minimalists, than to most of his British contemporaries and his marriage to the Singaporean artist Kim Lim linked him with an Eastern aesthetic, although harmony and balance were central to his art right from the start. He thought of himself equally as sculptor and painter. While he is habitually linked with the ‘Geometry of Fear’ – a group of British sculptors, including Reg Butler, Eduardo Paolozzi and Lynn Chadwick, who rose to international prominence in the 1950s in the wake of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth – his work has a seriousness of purpose and depth of thought that marks it apart. He connects with just about every art group of the period, but at the same time was allied to none. This independent streak is a key characteristic of his life and work. Turnbull was born in January 1922 in Dundee, the son of a shipyard engineer. He left school at 15, but attended evening art classes. One of his teachers spotted his talent and got him a job as an illustrator for the Dundee-based publishing house DC Thompson. He joined the RAF in 1941, training in Canada and flying in India and Ceylon. His mother died of cancer 14
in 1945 and his father took his own life soon after; Turnbull never spoke of these events, but as an only child they must have marked him deeply. Turning down a lucrative invitation to become a full-time commercial pilot, in 1946 he enrolled in the painting department at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. After a few weeks, he moved to the sculpture department where he met Paolozzi, who became a close friend. Turnbull visited Paris in 1947 and moved there the following year. At that time, you could meet the legends of modern art without much difficulty. Turnbull knocked on Constantin Brancusi’s door and persuaded the great sculptor to let him in, spending an hour wandering about the studio. Fernand Léger welcomed him into his studio and talked at length about his work. Jean Hélion – married to Peggy Guggenheim’s daughter Pegeen – took Turnbull under his wing and invited him to parties attended by the Surrealists. Living in a tiny, top-floor chambre de bonne in Montmartre, Turnbull would smuggle bags of plaster past his landlady and make extraordinary stick-like figures and mobiles in his room. Made in wet plaster on metal armatures, most of these works were designed to sit on a flat surface or were incorporated into horizontal bases, partly inspired by Alberto Giacometti’s ‘City Square’ pieces. One work, Hanging Sculpture, 1949 (pl.1, p.30), was a mobile, with little arrow-like forms hanging from a kind of horizontal wheel. The dangling forms were inspired by fish seen at an aquarium in Paris. Turnbull recalled how the fish would float, immobile, and then suddenly shoot off, moving as a single entity. The idea also inspired a group of paintings, which include Aquarium 2, (pl.11, p.52): ‘I loved aquariums.
Self-portrait with the plaster version of Hanging Sculpture, (pl.1, p.30) in Paris, 1949
2 Letter to the Tate Gallery, 1967, quoted in Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, Lund Humphries, 2005, p.17
Fish tanks hanging in space and moving in shoals. The movement of lobsters. I became quite expert with a diabolo. I was obsessed with things in a state of balance.’ 2 ‘A state of balance’ remained the central theme of Turnbull’s work. Typical of his lateral thinking, which ignored time, type and hierarchy, in Paris he haunted a circus, studying the acrobats and tight-rope walkers (sketches made in 1949 were used as the basis for paintings created later in London, such as Circus Figure, 1951, illus p.7). He also studied the way billiard balls ricochet off each other and the sudden changes in movement of balls in a pinball machine. Turnbull’s sculptures of this date were all made in plaster, with the hope of casting them in bronze at a later date, when funds permitted. Hanging Sculpture, for example, was not cast until towards the end of Turnbull’s life. The original plaster version was recently acquired by the Tate. The critic David Sylvester, who also lived in Paris, organised a joint show of sculpture by Turnbull and Paolozzi at Erica Brausen’s legendary Hanover Gallery in Mayfair in
February 1950. Brausen was also the dealer of Giacometti, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Short of funds, Turnbull settled in London later that year (many of the plaster sculptures he had made in Paris were lost in the moving process) and became involved with the recently-formed Institute of Contemporary Arts. He was one of several young artists, including Richard Hamilton and the photographer Nigel Henderson, who formed the Independent Group, which is often seen as the point of departure for Pop Art. What singled Turnbull out was his interest in, and reinterpretation of, the powerful, simplified forms of ancient and non-western art. Indeed, one of his chief interests in art at this time was trying to suggest the sense of a human head with as little figurative information as possible (as in both Head paintings, dating from 1955, pl.15, p.60 and pl.16, p.62 and Calligraphic Head, 1956, illus p.15). Turnbull’s international reputation was established with his inclusion in the exhibition New Aspects of British Sculpture, held in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1952. Selected by Herbert Read, it included work by the likes of Lynn Chadwick, Reg Butler and Kenneth Armitage, whose rough, spiky bronzes seemed to encapsulate the angst of the postwar nuclear age. Turnbull could not afford to visit the exhibition – at the time he was working night-shifts at an ice-cream factory. That same year he was given his first solo exhibition at the Hanover Gallery. In the mid-1950s Turnbull formed relationships with American artists and collectors, including Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. Alongside his sculpture, Turnbull always painted and he had separate studios for the two practices.
3 William Turnbull in Uppercase 4, 1960, quoted in Richard Morphet, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, Tate Gallery, London, 1973, p.48
In both personality and appearance, If he had a problem or impasse with a Turnbull was the embodiment of his art: sculpture, he would turn to painting, almost elegant, understated, authoritative and paradoxically, working out the problem exuding integrity. He spoke with the same on a flat surface, or vice versa. His whitemeasured control that he applied to his on-white paintings pre-date those of the sculpture, never using more detail than American minimalist Robert Ryman. Oil was necessary. His first marriage was to the paintings such as 5-1959, 1959, (pl.19, p.68) concert pianist Katharina Wolpe in 1950. He or 14-1960 (Mauve Swell), 1960, (pl. 21, p.72), married his second wife, the eminent sculptor are concerned above all with colour, never and printmaker Kim Lim in 1960. She had with tones. Just as the sculptures reference come to London from Singapore to study at the ancient and the contemporary, so Saint Martin’s College of Art, and then at the these paintings concern time and space. Slade. Trips to the Far East with her proved He described them as ‘banners carrying inspirational for Turnbull, as his gnarled the ideogram of our time; not creating a bronzes, which speak of an anxiety rooted familiar illusionistic space that takes us into in Parisian Existentialism, gave way to a world of perspective or chiaroscuro, but something more akin to Minimalism, rooted acting outwards into our own world, large in an Eastern aesthetic. environmental shields changing our lives, In the early 1980s, Turnbull returned to the provocations to contemplation and action.’ 3 material that was his abiding love – bronze – What is not often commented upon is that producing works which, more than ever, Turnbull was also very concerned with colour in his sculptures. Where some sculptors simply connected with ancient pre-classical sculpture. An exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in take delivery of casts, he would spend days London in 1995, selected by David Sylvester, at the foundry, supervising the application of put Turnbull firmly back on the map (it was the patina, and would happily strip it all and his first major show in a public space since his restart it if it was not to his satisfaction. Tate Gallery retrospective in 1973). In the 1950s he favoured bronze, and in Unusually among artists of his standing, the early 1960s he made a number of works he was diffident when talking about himself, composed of bronze and carved wood, sometimes in stacked units, but always treated but was genuinely interested in the lives of others. He would not indulge in gossip or selfwith minimal intervention. He wanted the promotion, and if invited to do so would deftly materials to ‘speak for themselves’, an idea that had originated in Japanese art. One of the steer the conversation in another direction. But the idea of Turnbull as an ascetic, monkkey works of this period is Agamemnon, 1962, like figure can be exaggerated. His works may (pl.10, p.48), a monumental work that has not connect with Cycladic and Neolithic art, but been seen in public for many years. Human in his eyes were always open to the modern size and form, and totemic in nature, it speaks world. His sons were champion skateboarders of ancient gods, rituals and Greek myths, but and the forms of their skateboards inspired a also of the Far East. Turnbull had travelled to series of figurative works, while his great Idol Cambodia, Japan and Singapore for the first time that year. Balance, equilibrium and gravity bronzes of the 1950s refer in part to ancient figures of worship, but also to contemporary remained the defining features of Turnbull’s figures of worship: Hollywood screen idols, works of this period and, indeed, of his entire such as Marilyn Monroe. Turnbull navigated oeuvre. In the mid-1960s, that same approach the distant past and the immediate present as was brought to other pre-manufactured if they were a Möbius strip, constantly turning materials, including steel, Perspex and fibreglass, and these remained his materials of in on each other. His art speaks of a timeless visual language. choice throughout the 1970s. 16
Artist’s sketchbook Extracts from William Turnbull’s recently discovered personal sketchbook, written in Paris in 1948, when he was just twenty-six years old.
Turnbull’s sketchbook offers a fascinating insight into the young artist’s mind. His notes reveal a strong interest in Ancient Greek philosophy, religion, politics and literature. They touch upon Aristotle’s theory of evolution, the religion of Orphism and, within this, the philosophy of Empedocles, Pythagoras’s principles of harmonics and the literature of Aeschylus, whose play, Agamemnon, is considered a masterpiece of Greek tragedy. This particular subject would be explored by Turnbull fourteen years later, in 1962, when he created the unique and monumental sculpture of the same title (pl.10, p.48). This knowledge is combined with further references to Christianity, the Reformation, the philosophy of Friedrich Engels, the music of Brahms and Wagner and the artistic theories of Leonardo da Vinci, Paul Cézanne and Umberto Boccioni, to name just a few. These notes were not written as an official artistic statement by Turnbull. They are a collection of thoughts, words and theory, both personal to the artist and borrowed from others, which reveal the breadth of his intellectual curiosity and his fundamental thoughts concerning both art and the human experience throughout time, ideas he would continue to explore and develop throughout his career.
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Greeks attributed good or bad effects upon themselves to the pleasures or displeasures of their gods (belief in mythical world) Christianity – development of conscience (transferring importance to the spiritual world.) Aeschylus, Sophocles etc and the change of constitution of the state. Rupture with old Homeric conception of Gods.
Difference of visual sensations when people are seen from above – flying aircraft .1
A small round object such as an apple, lemon head etc on a large flat plane.
Flowers coming out of a pot (different relation and experience of space). Linear by the plant, volumetric by the pot.
Pot female form – large cavity – to get sensation of flower coming out of the pot. 1 In 1941 Turnbull had joined the RAF and served as a pilot in Canada, India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
An object has only quality relative to other objects and qualities. Objects growing in relation to one another / aircraft in formation – people in long metro tunnels walking beside and towards one aircraft approaching – change of position and speed / relatively (relative movement and scale). Change of direction of force and energy – movement of turning a handle in one direction sometimes in the same plane and sometimes in another opposite plane.
Cause direction reactor (primary) Effect (secondary motion) Also as in electric currents in coils
Stem position Horizontal x cyclic
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Why do I sometimes destroy drawings which seem to have no artistic merit and yet which are the origins of new consciousness of things? Likeness of things seen under a microscope to primitive art forms and designs. Difference of Brahms and Wagner. Causes effect on music (…) – idea of leit-motif introduction of pagan magic. Sculpture which creates its own space. Give feeling that object is in the same space as the sculpture. Sometimes I can feel of a new sculpture and moment in time which will be so vital and energetic that all before will seem dead and heavy. Some words Heraclitus is reported to have spoken to a group of strangers who wanted to see him as they approached they noticed he was warming himself by an oven. They stopped in surprise; when he …
… saw them hesitating he encouraged them to come nearer with the words ‘in this place the gods are also present.
People in a tunnel. Life is a business of coming into and ceasing to be – of always asking why and never finding an answer. Perhaps the reason why I find the solution of space and position of objects in relation to one another by perspective quite unsatisfactory is because it is a single point of view vision and does not satisfactorily consider the objects in full spatial relation to one another. To make sculpture where the observer is one of the parts of the space structure. The composite image in Dostoyevsky. Relation of Cezanne to primitive art in comparison with his predecessors. A texture made intentionally is a description and not concerned with the real problem of space and form.
Two ways of approaching an object 1. as a particular quality by itself 2. as a quality in relationship to other things The second of these two methods seems to be the truest and most important. If I draw an object in relation to another object it will only show one of its qualities of scale (smallness) but if I add another object smaller than it this will show its complete scale qualities (that of greatness also). Human nature was taught much by sheer force of circumstance and these lessons were taken over by reason, refined and supplemented – Epicurus. Everyone of us no matter what he does is longing for the endless fame, the incomparable glory that is theirs, and the nobler he is the greater his ambition, because he is in love with the eternal. Diotima to Socrates 2 And so it is no wonder that every creature prizes its own issue, since the … whole of creation is inspired by this love, this passion for immortality.3 2 Taken from the Symposium written by Plato c. 385 – 370 bc 3 Ibid
Steel & Stelae by Antony Gormley
The artist in his studio, c.1957, with Head 2, Head 3, and Relief, all 1955
The early 1950s were a dreadful period to be attempting to make art in Britain – there was an incredible constriction, an imaginative lack, that’s the only way to describe the situation. The moral order of the 1950s was that we were lucky to be alive at all. We were just out of rationing, everything was measured, and if you were given something you were a very lucky person. This was the beginning of the Cold War and there was a general sense of just having escaped from a very dark world order. The American model presented the happy land of plenty where everything was possible, but we didn’t have the cash, so modern for us ended up being utility. To have made art in that period is an amazing thing in itself. Another way of thinking about it was that it was the necessary response to this utilitarian desert. William Turnbull refused the ‘Geometry of Fear’. Bernard Meadows, Kenneth Armitage and Lynn Chadwick took inspiration from Alberto Giacometti but sharpened the Swiss sculptor’s perception-based analysis of looking into an edgy anxiety. Turnbull understood sculpture as something much more vital and hopeful; a vehicle of continuity, stillness and peace. During the early 1950s, you could say Turnbull’s works were linear, but not spiky in the manner of Germaine Richier or Chadwick, or lost in their etiolation in the manner of Armitage. I think they’re indicative of a very
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different sensibility, of someone who’s thinking about the future in a positive way rather than dwelling on man’s past injustice to man. Turnbull is an extraordinary figure and a radical modernist. He recognised that sculpture is of its nature archaic and that it comes from a very atavistic region of human consciousness. There’s an extraordinary tension in his work that acknowledges the artistic languages that evolved in the middle of the 20th century. We see clear intimations of Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt and the radicals of the New York School. We also see a wonderful dialogue with Giacometti and the concept of scale. Think of Giacometti’s square and then of Turnbull’s works that are like chessboards but could also be an entire city plan. Turnbull unhitches the relationship between scale and size and can make a very small thing that implies spectacular or infinite spaces. He never denies alternative visions. At the same time as making highly totemic works that clearly reference a horse, a figure or a blade from the Mesolithic period 20,000 years ago, he was looking at how industrial production has changed the world; exhibiting a single painted I-beam on the ground as an iconic object of the now. It’s that deep understanding of the nature of sculpture through time, mixed with a knowledge of how it deals with space and scale, that makes Turnbull’s work so engaging, important and relevant.
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Installation images, shot at Perseverance Works, London. Unless stated otherwise all works come directly from the Estate of the Artist. pp.6 – 7, Aquarium 2, 1952, (pl.11, p.52); Acrobat, 1951, bronze with stone base, 43 ¾ x 32 x 20 ⅛ inches; Circus Figure, 1951, oil on canvas, 24 ⅛ x 16 inches; Head, 1950, bronze, 27 ⅜ x 17 ⅞ inches. pp.10 – 11, Head 1, 1955, (pl.3, p.34); Head, 1957, bronze, 8 ¼ x 11 ¾ x 7 ½ inches, Head (Reclining Head), 1955, (pl.4, p.36) p.15, Source, 1958, (pl.9, p.46); Calligraphic Head, 1956, oil on canvas, 60 ½ x 44 ¼ inches; Female Figure, 1955, bronze, 47 ¾ x 16 ½ x 13 ¾ inches. pp.22 – 23, foreground; Horse, 1954, bronze with York stone base, 26 ¼ x 26 ⅜ x 9 ⅛ inches, Private Collection, London, Pegasus, 1954, bronze, 35 x 17 ½ x 29 ¼ inches; background; 7-1958, 1958 (pl.17, p.64); 29-1958, 1958, (pl.18, p.66) pp.26 – 27, Prometheus, 1961, rosewood, 37 ⅛ x 30 ⅛ x 12 ⅝ inches; 10-1958, 1958, oil on canvas, 77 ½ x 173 ⅝ inches; Head, 1957, (as above); Fin 2, 1957 (pl.8, p.44)
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Sculpture
Environmental art Freedom is the separation of inseparable ideas. The antagonist of tradition is its true heir. We are surely the barbarians, the primitives of the space age, at the beginnings. Concentration of noise, speed, congestion, speed of communication, the congestion of Futurist-Cubist space, are all now at their most. This is the end of the earthbound man, the end of the neo-platonic era, the beginning of the space-age man with new worlds, words, signs. We can no longer reject that which will not fit itself neatly into triangles or squares as being formless (there was form in garbage for a scavenger with eyes like Kurt Schwitters), familiarity breeds form, which is total not partial. We have seen cheap insults (for example, Pollock’s ‘Yankee Doodles’) and the old phrases (nihilistic, interior decoration) bandied about when the old sticks won’t measure the new cloth and the critics are at a loss, change to profound respect when it became safer. But these large canvases are the banners carrying the ideogram of our time; not creating a familiar illusionistic space that takes us into a world of perspective or chiaroscuro, but acting outwards into our own world, large environmental shields changing our lives but leaving us in its centre; provocations to contemplation and action. They behave on many levels. These are the true defendants of great painting, the inheritors of tradition, but troublesome, demanding your participation, your commitment in the act of looking, with little comfort from the usual frame of reference. We are all out of apples. But what about nature? Says the man. Crocuses break stones with as much force as a lightning flash and Monet’s lilyponds are as profoundly creative places as Michelangelo’s stormy creation of Adam. But we can’t stay here. Watch out for your natural laws when the horizons are vertical and there are fish in the sky. The situation is, as they say, ‘fluid’. There is more to come. William Turnbull, 1958
1 Hanging Sculpture 1949
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2 Horse 1950
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3 Head 1 1955
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4 Head (Reclining Head) 1955
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5 Metamorphosis 1955
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6 Figure 1955
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7 Sculpture 1956
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8 Fin 2 1957
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9 Source 1958
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10 Agamemnon 1962
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Paintings
Nature into art
(extract)
For many artists of the ’50s the absorption of nature and the act of painting are two activities reconciled during the act of painting. That is, by projection or extension a dialogue takes place between the artist and his material; and like a conversation it stops when one of the parties involved has nothing more to say to the other. It is impossible to pre-plan — it is a live performance. That is not, as it is often suggested to be, an act of egoism and indifference to nature: rather it is the reverse. It can stem from the deepest respect for things, from the belief that one does not attempt to imitate them or recreate them in their own terms. The artist attempts to create a new object, participating as a parallel activity. This object then exists in the world as part of nature, as the person who makes it is — its qualities never absolute but changing in relation to the participation of the spectator. The spectator finds nature in art and the artist finds nature in the act of painting. Monet chose the theme of the lilyponds at Giverny for his later paintings, surely to satisfy the necessity to create a particular kind of picture surface, without horizon, and with little sensation of high or low. The rich pigmentation and full flexibility of the gestures make the marks of paint (the handwriting) create a surface which is close to the way many post-war artists organize a picture surface (Pollock, Still, Guston). It is a different way of seeing nature and organizing a picture surface from his early paintings — the same nature only fifty years older. William Turnbull, 1957
11 Aquarium 2 1952
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12 Walking Figures 1952
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13 Walking Figures 1953
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14 Head 1954
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15 Head 1955
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16 Head 1955
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17 7-1958 1958
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18 29-1958 1958
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19 5-1959 1959
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20 6-1959 1959
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21 14-1960 (Mauve Swell) 1960
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Works on paper
Head semantics From about ’50 – ’56 I titled a number of paintings and sculptures ‘HEAD’. The word meant for me what I imagine the word ‘Landscape’ had meant for some painters — a format that could carry different loadings. Almost anything could be a head — and a head almost anything — given the slightest clue to the decoding. The shape basic to most of them relates about as much to a head as that lumpy sphere that crowns every snowman. In the sculptures I wanted to get rid of amputations across the chest (which is always how I’ve felt about ‘portrait busts’) and in the paintings I didn’t want to ‘transpose a head from three- dimensional reality to a flat surface’- but to imagine what a head would be if flat (squeezed between two pieces of glass like a micro slide) and made of paint marks. The sort of thing that interested me was — how little will suggest a head how much load will the shape take and still read head head as colony head as landscape head as mask head as ideogram head as sign, etc. A few years ago I dropped the head image. In the paintings I still use a circle or sections of it, and with sculpture, because the forms often sit on top of columnlike shapes, they still often read as heads. William Turnbull, 1960
22 Walking Figure 1953
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23 Walking Figures 1953
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24 Head 1954
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25 Head 1955
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26 Head 1955
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27 Head 1956
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28 Head 1956
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29 Untitled 1959
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30 Untitled 1959
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31 Untitled c.1959
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Available Works Unless stated otherwise all works come directly from the Estate of the Artist 1 Hanging Sculpture 1949 bronze with wire height 48 inches / 121.9 cm cast no.1/6, edition of 6 (only 3 cast out) Exhibited London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June – 3 July 2010, cat no.3, original plaster version illus b/w, p.19 Derbyshire, Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth House, 10 March – 30 June 2013, fig.3, original plaster version illus b/w, p.21 Literature Richard Morphet, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1973, fig.3, original plaster version illus b/w, p.23 Patrick Elliott, ‘William Turnbull: A Consistent Way of Thinking’, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, David Sylvester (intro.), Merrell Holberton in association with Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995, p.18 Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.8, original plaster version illus b/w, fig.4, p.152 2 Horse 1950 bronze 30 ¾ x 37 ½ x 24 ½ inches / 78.1 x 95.3 x 62.2 cm cast no.6/6, edition of 6 plus 1 AC 98
Exhibited Venice, XXVI Biennale, The British Pavilion, New Aspects of British Sculpture, 14 June – 19 October 1952, The British Council, cat no.150, artist's cast exhibited London, Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty, 1 February – 1 April 1990, cat no.74, artist’s cast illus b/w, p.118, touring to: Valencia, IVAM Centro Julio González, 16 May – 16 September 1990 Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, 4 November – 13 January 1991 Berkeley, University Art Museum, 6 February – 21 April 1991 New Hampshire, Hood Museum of Art, 8 June – 18 August 1991 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Horses – Development of a Theme, Other Sculptures and Paintings, 22 June – 20 July 2001, cat no.2, cast no.3/6 illus colour, p.7 London, James Hyman Fine Art, Henry Moore and the Geometry of Fear, 19 November 2002 – 18 January 2003, cat no.29, cast no.3/6 illus colour, p.47 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures and Paintings 1946 – 1962, 31 January – 24 February 2007, cat no.2, cast no.1/6 illus colour, p.7 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June – 3 July 2010, cat no.8, this cast illus colour, p.30 Literature Richard Morphet, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1973, fig.7, unknown cast illus b/w, p.27 Sandy Nairne and Nicholas Serota (eds.),
British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1981, unknown cast illus b/w, p.144 Patrick Elliott, ‘William Turnbull: A Consistent Way of Thinking’, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, David Sylvester (intro.), Merrell Holberton in association with Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995, p.18 Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.20, unknown cast illus b/w, fig.8 p.203 3 Head 1 1955 bronze 4 ½ x 7 ⅛ x 4 ⅛ inches / 11.4 x 17.8 x 10.2 cm stamped with artist’s monogram, numbered and dated cast no.4/4, edition of 4 Exhibited London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull Sculpture and Painting, 15 August – 7 October 1973, cat no.21, unknown cast illus b/w, p.30 Derbyshire, Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth House, 10 March – 30 June 2013, cat no.24, unknown cast illus colour, p.80 Literature Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.52, unknown cast illus b/w, p.93 4 Head (Reclining Head) 1955 bronze 9 ⅛ x 22 ½ x 9 ⅛ inches / 22.9 x 57 x 22.9 cm cast no.2/2, edition of 2
Exhibited London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, 15 August – 7 October 1973, cat no.20, unknown cast illus b/w, p.30 Derbyshire, Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth House, 10 March- 30 June 2013, cat no.27, this cast illus colour, p.81 Literature Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.51, unknown cast illus b/w, p.92 5 Metamorphosis 1955 bronze 13 ½ x 25 ¾ x 18 ¼ inches / 34.3 x 65.4 x 46.4 cm stamped with artist’s monogram and dated unique Exhibited Cambridge, Jesus College, Sculpture in the Close: An exhibition of the Works of William Turnbull, 24 June – 31 July 1990, cat no.3, illus b/w, p.7 Literature Patrick Elliott, ‘William Turnbull: A Consistent Way of Thinking’, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, David Sylvester (intro.), Merrell Holberton in association with the Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995, pl.10, illus b/w, p.23 Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.55, illus b/w, p.945 unknown cast
6 Figure 1955 bronze 42 ⅛ x 7 ¼ x 15 inches / 107 x 18.5 x 38 cm stamped with artist’s monogram, numbered and dated cast no.2/4, edition of 4 plus 1 AC Exhibited London, Institute of Contemporary Arts, William Turnbull: New Sculpture and Paintings, 25 September – 2 November 1957, cat no.14, original plaster version illus b/w, unpaginated, exhibited as Standing Male Figure West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull: Retrospective 1946 – 2003, 14 May – 9 October 2005, artist's cast exhibited London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures and Paintings 1946 – 62, 31 January – 24 February 2007, cat no.3, artist's cast illus colour, p.9 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June – 3 July 2010, cat no.12, this cast illus colour, p.43 Derbyshire, Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth House, 10 March – 30 June 2013, cat no.67, unknown cast illus colour, pp.65 & 88 Literature Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.59, unknown cast illus b/w, p.95 7 Sculpture 1956 bronze 58 x 49 ⅛ x 15 inches / 147.3 x 124.5 x 38 cm stamped with artist’s monogram, numbered and dated cast no.4/4, edition of 4 plus 1 AC 100
Exhibited Balboa, Pavilion Gallery, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, 13 March – 24 April 1966, cat no.5, unknown cast London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, 15 August – 7 October 1973, cat no.32, unknown cast illus b/w, p.37 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures 1946 – 62, 1985 – 87, 28 October – 21 November 1987, cat no.8, unknown cast illus colour, p.27 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Paintings 1959 – 1963, Bronze Sculpture 1954 – 1958, 24 November – 22 December 2004, cat no.15, artist's cast illus colour, unpaginated West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull: Retrospective 1946 – 2003, 14 May – 9 October 2005, artist's cast exhibited London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures and Paintings, 31 January – 24 February 2007, cat no.5, cast no.2/4 illus colour, p.13 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June – 3 July 2010, cat no.15, this cast illus colour, p.49 Derbyshire, Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth House, 10 March – 30 June 2013, cat no.64, unknown cast illus colour, pp.62 & 87 Literature Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.71, unknown cast illus b/w, p.99
8 Fin 2 1957 bronze 49 ⅝ x 16 ½ x 16 ½ inches / 126 x 42 x 42 cms stamped with artist’s monogram and dated AC, edition of 3 plus 1 AC; each with a unique base Exhibited London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, 15 August – 7 October 1973, cat no.39, unknown cast illus b/w, p.39 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures 1946 – 62, 1985 – 87, 28 October – 21 November 1987, cat no.12, unknown cast illus colour, p.35 Literature Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.80, unknown cast illus b/w, p.103 9 Source 1958 bronze on York stone base 48 ⅝ x 20 ⅞ x 5 ⅛ inches / 123.6 x 52.9 x 13 cm stamped with artist’s monogram, numbered and dated cast no.2/4, edition of 4 (only 2 cast out) Exhibited London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, 15 August – 7 October 1973, cat no.41, unknown cast illus colour, p.13 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures 1946 – 62, 1985 – 87, 28 October – 21 November 1987, cat no.13, unknown cast illus colour, p.37 Cambridge, Jesus College, Sculpture in the Close: An exhibition of the works of William Turnbull, 24 June – 31 July 1990, cat no.17, unknown cast illus b/w, p.27
London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Paintings 1959 – 1963, Bronze Sculpture 1954 – 1958, 24 November – 22 December 2004, cat no.18, unknown cast, illus colour, unpaginated West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull: Retrospective 1946 – 2003, 14 May – 9 October 2005, cat no.33, unknown cast illus colour, p.20 Derbyshire, Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth House, 10 March – 30 June 2013, fig.11, unknown cast illus b/w, p.27 Literature Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.85, unknown cast illus b/w, p.106 10 Agamemnon 1962 bronze, rosewood and stone 67 ½ x 18 ¼ inches / 171.5 x 46.5 cm unique stamped with artist’s monogram on bronze Collections with Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York Private Collection, acquired from above November 1966 Private Collection, Europe, inherited from above Exhibited New York, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Turnbull, October 1963, cat no.7, detail illus b/w, p.8 and sculpture illus b/w, cover of invitation Literature Richard Morphet, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, exhibition
catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1973, fig.16, illus b/w, p.41 Sandy Nairne and Nicholas Serota (eds.), British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1981, illus b/w, p.168 Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.111, illus b/w, p.116 11 Aquarium 2 1952 oil on canvas 30 ⅛ x 40 ⅛ inches / 76.5 x 101.8 cm signed and dated verso 12 Walking Figures 1952 oil on canvas 60 ¼ x 40 ⅜ inches / 153 x 102.5 cm signed and dated verso 13 Walking Figures 1953 oil on canvas 73 ⅞ x 66 ⅛ inches / 187.5 x 167.8 cm signed and dated verso 14 Head 1954 oil on canvas 24 ⅛ x 19 ¾ inches / 61.3 x 50 cm signed and dated verso Exhibited Derbyshire, Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth House, 10 March – 30 June 2013, cat no.7, illus colour, p.77 Literature Theo Crosby (ed.), William Turnbull, 'Statements 1949 – 60', Uppercase 4, Whitefriars, London, 1960, illus b/w, unpaginated 102
15 Head 1955 oil on canvas 29 ⅞ x 25 inches / 76 x 63.5 cm signed twice and dated verso Exhibited London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull, Sculpture and Painting, 15 August – 7 October 1973, pp.32 & 33, fig.11, illus b/w, p.32 Derbyshire, Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth House, 10 March – 30 June 2013, cat no.8, illus colour, p.77 16 Head 1955 oil on canvas 29 ⅞ x 25 inches / 76 x 63.5 cm signed and dated verso Exhibited Derbyshire, Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth House, 10 March – 30 June 2013, cat no.9, illus colour, p.77 17 7-1958 1958 oil on canvas 78 x 58 inches / 198.1 x 147.3 cm signed and dated twice, titled verso Literature Patrick Elliott, ‘William Turnbull: A Consistent Way of Thinking’, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, David Sylvester (intro.), Merrell Holberton in association with the Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995, pl.25, illus colour, p.42 18 29-1958 1958 oil on canvas 60 x 60 inches / 152.4 x 152.4 cm signed and dated twice, titled verso
Exhibited London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull, Sculpture and Painting, 15 August – 7 October 1973, cat no.92 London, Serpentine Gallery, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, exhibition catalogue, Merrell Holberton in association with the Serpentine Gallery, London, 15 November 1995 – 7 January 1996, pl.16, illus colour, p.30 19 5-1959 1959 oil on canvas 70 x 70 inches / 177.8 x 177.8 cm signed and dated verso; titled and signed on overlap, inscribed 'tournament' and 'yin = yang' Exhibited London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June – 3 July 2010, cat no.33, illus colour, p.91 20 6-1959 1959 oil on canvas 70 x 70 inches / 177.8 x 177.8 cm dated verso 21 14-1960 (Mauve Swell) 1960 oil on canvas 70 x 70 inches / 177.8 x 177.8 cm signed and dated twice verso 22 Walking Figure 1953 ink and coloured pencil on paper 28 ½ x 18 ⅞ inches / 72.25 x 48 cm 23 Walking Figures 1953 ink on paper 27 ⅜ x 19 ⅜ inches / 69.5 x 49.3 cm signed and dated
24 Head 1954 lithograph 22 ½ x 17 ½ inches / 57 x 44.5 cm signed, dated and inscribed ‘Proof’ unique 25 Head 1955 oil on paper 28 ⅝ x 21 ⅛ inches / 72.75 x 53.75 cm signed and dated 26 Head 1955 ink and coloured pencil on paper 20 ⅞ x 16 ½ inches / 53 x 42 cm signed and dated 27 Head 1956 oil on paper 29 ½ x 22 ⅜ inches / 74.8 x 56.7 cm signed and dated 28 Head 1956 ink on paper 30 ⅛ x 22 ⅛ inches / 76.5 x 56 cm signed and dated 29 Untitled 1959 ink on paper 31 ⅛ x 23 ⅝ inches / 79 x 60 cm signed and dated 30 Untitled 1959 ink on paper 31 ⅛ x 23 ⅝ inches / 79 x 60 cm signed and dated 31 Untitled c.1959 gouache on paper 29 ⅞ x 21 ⅝ inches / 75.9 x 54.9 cm Collections The Artist Leslie Waddington, London
Biography and Selected Exhibitions 1922 Born Dundee, Scotland, 11 January 1939 – 41 Worked in the illustration department of a national periodical company, Dundee 1946 – 48 Studied at Slade School of Fine Art, London 1948 – 50 Lived and worked in Paris 1950 Took up permanent residence in London First marriage to the musician Katharina Wolpe Kenneth King, Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull, Hanover Gallery, London; Aspects of British Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 1952 Visiting Artist, taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London until 1961 Solo exhibition at Hanover Gallery; New Aspects of British Art, British Pavilion, XXVI Biennale, Venice; Young Sculptors, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 104
1956 Contemporary Sculpture, Hanover Gallery, London; This is Tomorrow, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Yngre Brittiska Skulptorer, Gothenburg Museum touring exhibition 1957 First visit to USA Solo exhibition, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Ten British Sculptors Exhibition, Biennale São Paulo touring exhibition 1958 Contemporary British Sculpture, Arts Council of Great Britain, London touring exhibition; New Trends in British Art, New York-Rome Art Foundation, touring exhibition 1959 European Art Today: 35 Painters and Sculptors, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, touring exhibition 1960 Married sculptor and printmaker, Kim Lim First solo exhibition at Molton Street Gallery, London, further solo show in 1961 The Mysterious Sign, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
1961 2nd International Exhibition of Sculpture, Musée Rodin, Paris; Neue Malerei in England, Stadtisches Museum, Leverkusen, Germany; Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pennsylvania 1962 Son Alex born First travels in Japan, Cambodia and Malaysia Hirshhorn Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; British Art Today, San Francisco Museum of Art, touring exhibition 1963 Son Johnny born Solo exhibition, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York 1964 Begins teaching sculpture at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, continues until 1972 Guggenheim International, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, Tate Gallery, London 1965 Solo exhibition, Benington College,
Vermont Solo exhibition, Galerie Müller, Stuttgart British Sculpture in the Sixties, Tate Gallery, London; Signale, Kunsthalle, Basel; Drawings from the Betty Parsons Collection, New York; Sculpture from the Albert A. List Family Collection, New School Art Center, New York 1966 Solo exhibition, Pavilion Gallery, Balboa, California New Shapes and Forms of Colour, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1967 First solo exhibition at Waddington Galleries, London, further solo shows in 1969, 1970, 1976, 1978, 1981, 1982, 1985, 1991, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010 Solo exhibition, IX Bienal, São Paulo, touring to South America Guggenheim International, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1968 Solo exhibition, Hayward Gallery, London Documenta 4, Kassel, Germany; Sculpture in
the City, Arts Council Gallery, London, touring exhibition 1972 Commissioned by the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation to create a public sculpture for the City Sculpture Project 1973 Major retrospective exhibition at the Tate Gallery, London, organised by Richard Morphet 1974 Solo exhibition organised by Scottish Arts Council, Edinburgh British Painting, Hayward Gallery, London 1976 The Human Clay, Hayward Gallery, London 1977 British Painting: 1952 – 77, Royal Academy of Arts, London 1978 The Mechanised Image, Arts Council of Great Britain, touring exhibition John Moores Liverpool Exhibition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2nd prize)
1979 Tate 79 (inaugural exhibition for the new extension), Tate Gallery, London
and the Aesthetics of Plenty, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, touring exhibition
1981 British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century: Part 2: Symbol and Imagination 1951 – 1980, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
1992 New Realities, Art in Western Europe 1945 – 68, Tate Gallery, Liverpool
1984 Kim Lim and William Turnbull, National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore 1986 Forty Years of Modern Art, 1945 – 1985, Tate Gallery, London; British Sculpture 1950 – 1965, New Art Centre, London 1987 British Art in the Twentieth Century: The Modern Movement, Royal Academy of Arts, London, touring to Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
1993 The Sixties Art Scene in London, Barbican Art Gallery, London 1995 Solo exhibition, Serpentine Gallery, London, selected by David Sylvester 1997 From Blast to Pop: Aspects of Modern British Art, 1915 – 1965, David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago 2000 Welded Sculpture of the Twentieth Century, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York
1989 Scottish Art Since 1900, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh touring exhibition
2002 Transition: The London Art Scene in the Fifties, Barbican Art Gallery, London
1990 The Independent Group: Postwar Britain
2004 Large Horse, 1990, installed at Yorkshire
Sculpture Park, Wakefield Art and the 60s: This Was Tomorrow, Tate Britain, London, touring exhibition 2005 William Turnbull: Retrospective 1946 – 2003, at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, May 2006 Survey exhibition of sculpture in the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain, London 2011 Beyond Time: William Turnbull, a film by Alex Turnbull and Pete Stern, narrated by Jude Law, premieres at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London Modern British Sculpture, Royal Academy of Arts, London 2012 Westminster Council City of Sculpture Festival, Park Lane, London November, dies in London aged 90 2013 Solo exhibition at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire
On the occasion of the exhibition William Turnbull: New Worlds, Words, Signs 29 September – 3 November 2017
17 St George Street, London W1S 1FJ +44 (0)20 7042 3233 www.waterman.co.uk Please contact the gallery for further information on available works.
Dust jacket, detail of Head, 1955 (pl.26, p.84) p.2, detail of Metamorphosis (pl.5, p.38) Text p.4, David Sylvester, ‘Introduction’, Kenneth King, Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull, exhibition catalogue, The Hanover Gallery, 21 February – 18 March 1950 Artist statements, p.29, Environmental Art, 1958; p.51, Nature into art, 1957; p.75, Head semantics, 1960, taken from ‘William Turnbull, painter sculptor’ Uppercase 4, (ed.) Theo Crosby, Whitefriars, London, 1960 Image credits Plates 1 – 21 and installations pp.2, 6 – 7, 10 – 11, 15, 22 – 23, 26 – 27, John Bodkin, DawkinsColour; plates 22 – 31, Prudence Cuming Associates All artwork © Turnbull Studio Archival images and content courtesy of Turnbull Studio 106
Published by Offer Waterman, London Exhibition Director: Polly Checker Research: Stella Vasileiadou Press: Paget PR Design: Richard Ardagh Studio Pre-press: DawkinsColour Printing: Pureprint ISBN: 978-0-9574188-8-2