William Turnbull Centenary Retrospective - Offer Waterman 2022 by Offer Waterman Gallery

WILLIAM TURNBULL Centenary Exhibition

WILLIAM TURNBULL (1922–2012)

WILLIAM TURNBULL Centenary Retrospective

Page 2: William Turnbull, Camden, c.1952

DRAWING IN SPACE

HEADS & MASKS

(1947–1949)

(1946–1956)

IDOLS & THE EXPRESSIVE IMAGE 65 (1955–1988)

ANCESTRAL LANDS

105

COLOUR & STEEL

135

(1958–1963)

(1964–1972)

HORSE, POWER & PRESENCE 169 (1946–2000)

Additional cataloguing for available works

197

Foreword

2022 marks a decade since we lost one of the most important, original, and insightful artists of modern history. This exhibition celebrates the great artistic legacy that William Turnbull left behind. Turnbull, more so than any artist of the past century has transcended place and time in his work and it is this very reason that his art speaks to so many. He belonged to that powerful generation of artists that emerged following the Second World War and experienced first-hand the electrifying work of both European and North American greats – amongst them Giacometti and Brancusi, Newman, Rothko and Frankenthaler. In an age before mass travel and colour reproductions these experiences were to have a profound – earth-shattering – impact over the artist and spurred him on to create some of the most powerful imagery of the post-war age. It is well documented that during his lifetime he refused to pick a side – sculpture vs. painting – and instead remained dedicated to both. This was celebrated in the many exhibitions devoted to his work during his lifetime, including his largest at the Tate in 1973. The gallery has represented the Estate of William Turnbull since 2015 and this is our third and most ambitious exhibition to date, bringing together the finest examples of his sculpture, painting and works on paper. I am honoured to represent the Estate of William Turnbull, and to be welcomed into the family and granted access to the important legacy he left behind. I am grateful to his two sons Alex and Johnny for their belief and trust in me and my gallery team. My great thanks go to those generous lenders who have made this exhibition possible, together with the team behind the exhibition. My special thanks go to Emily Drablow who co-curated this exhibition with Jon Woods, for her hard work and continued dedication to the project. But my greatest thanks go to the artist himself, whose great legacy this exhibition celebrates. Art is a journey of many twists and turns, like an ever-winding river, and with Turnbull’s work we are nowhere near the end of this incredible artistic journey.

Offer Waterman June 2022

1922, 100 years ago. What a very different time and landscape to where we find ourselves now in 2022. It’s hard to imagine what the world may have looked like back then, the year the BBC was founded and when women had only just won the right to vote. We’ve often wondered what inspired Bill to choose art as a path, growing up in the bleak post WW1 shipyards of Dundee. Nevertheless, we are all thankful that he did. Growing up with parents as artists you don’t always appreciate the wonder of what they do at the time. Washing large, coloured steel sculptures, the likes of 3x1, 9x1, Echo and Ripple for pocket money, whilst no mean feat, seemed very normal to us! In this current world of the virtual, the meta and the instant, the timeless power and substance of Bill’s work is something special to behold and marvel at. A significant body of work, across many mediums all complementing and informing each other. A reminder of the importance of a connection to the physical and the actual. An artist’s involvement and interaction with a material, shape and space. A lifetime commitment of hard work, sacrifice, not motivated by commercial gain or notoriety, but rather longevity, intention and integrity. It is with a great sense of pride and excitement that such a broad survey of his life’s work is on display in London in this wonderful centenary exhibition, in combinations that have not been seen since the Tate retrospective in 1973. We know Bill would be so proud to have his work presented in this way. We would like to thank Offer and all the team at the gallery for this opportunity and in particular Emily, for all her determination, research and hard work to put together this fantastic display.

Johnny & Alex Turnbull

‘ I START WITH AN IDEA OR SENSATION, AND FI WILL BE KEPT OR DESTROYED. BETWEEN THE ID WITH THE MATERIAL, THE CHANCE OCCURRENC OR REJECT – AN ACTIVITY, THAT LEAVES ME WI ORIGINAL IDEA. THE IDEA WAS JUST THE SEED T THE NAMING OR THE TITLE COMES AFTERWARD NOT INTERPRET THE IMAGE, SO THAT THE SCUL IT MEANS, AS A FLYPAPER DOES FLIES – IT BEC MORE COMPLEX THAN ALL THIS, AND YET MUC EVEN WANT TO. ANYWAY, THEORIES COME AFTE LIKE PREFACES, THEY SHOULD BE READ AFTER William Turnbull statement in Contemporary British Sculpture, exh. cat, The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1958

INISH WITH AN OBJECT – AN IMAGE – WHICH DEA AND THE IMAGE THERE IS A DIALOGUE CE OF SHAPES AND SURFACES THAT I LEAVE ITH SOMETHING VERY DIFFERENT FROM MY TO BE DESTROYED IN THE GROWING PROCESS. DS – SOMETHING GENERALISED, THAT WILL LPTURE COLLECTS SUGGESTIONS AS TO WHAT COMES WHAT PEOPLE SEE IN IT. IT IS MUCH CH SIMPLER…I CAN’T EXPLAIN IT ALL. I DON’T ER THE THING IS MADE AND NOT BEFORE, AND THE BOOK, IF AT ALL. ’

‘ I WAS FASCINATED WITH THINGS MOVING AND TOUCHING AND PERPETUALLY CONVINCED OF ENERGY AS CREATION. THE MOVEMENT OF INSECTS, FISH AND PLANTS SEEM TO BE A MAKING AND BREAKING OF CONTACTS. LIKE A MARVELLOUS ELECTRICAL SYSTEM. THE WORD MOST IN MY MIND WAS “CONTIGUITY.’’ ’ William Turnbull, in letter to the Tate Gallery 7 June 1967, cited in Richard Morphet, William Turnbull Sculpture and Painting, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1973, p26

DRAWING IN SPACE (1947–1949)

Drawing In Space

The sculpture, painting and works on paper here were all made by William Turnbull between 1947 to 1949. The two earliest works on paper – both titled Circus (1947) (cat nos. 7 & 8) and virtually identical in composition - include images of tightropes, tents and unicycles. One features bright yellow and purple paint, the other is in black and white and incorporates areas of newspaper collage within the charcoal lines, in a manner reminiscent of Picasso and Braque. Four years on, Turnbull returned to this subject with the bronze sculpture Acrobat (1951), a figure whose attenuated limbs echo the linearity of the earlier works on paper. This figure, stood with arms out to the side and one leg on a unicycle, simultaneously conveys a sense of both movement and balance – a formal duality which became a major theme in both his sculpture and painting. Turnbull would have been aware of other artists who were using circus imagery in their work, including Paul Klee (1879-1940). In 1945-6, a year or so before Turnbull made his first works on paper, Klee had a major solo exhibition at National Gallery in London and Turnbull later cited his drawings as an important influence.1 Turnbull may also have been inspired by Alexander Calder (1898-1976) who, after moving to Paris in 1926, created what came to be known as Cirque Calder, a sculpture comprising figurines of animals, clowns and acrobats, which he would ‘perform’, narrating the actions out loud, accompanied by music and lighting. The wheel-like form seen in both the Circus drawings and Acrobat appears in two kinetic mobiles both titled Hanging Sculpture (1949), in which eleven fish dangle down on lengths of wire. Similar simplified fishes are found anchored to a base in the table-top bronze Aquarium, (1949) (Coll. Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art) as well as in a number of collages on paper from the same year, two examples of which are included in this exhibition (cat nos. 2 & 3). In these collages, jellyfish, shoals of fish and coral are combined with large arrows pointing in different directions, signalling rapid changes in movement. Looking back later, Turnbull summarised his preoccupations at this time: 'I was very involved in the random movement of pin-ball machines, billiards (which I played a lot) and ball games of this sort; and the predictable movement of machines (in the Science Museum). Movements in different planes at different speeds. I loved aquariums. Fish in tanks hanging in space and moving in shoals. The movement of lobsters. I became quite expert with a Diablo. I was obsessed with things in a state of balance.' 2 ‘I was fascinated with things moving and touching and perceptually convinced of energy as creation. The movement

of insects, fish and plants seemed to be a making and breaking of contacts. Like a marvellous electrical system. The word most in my mind was “contiguity”. Perhaps it doesn’t express what I mean but it acted as a mnemonic aid. I wanted to make sculpture that would express implication of movement (not describe it), ambiguity of content, and simplicity (lack of interesting detail separate from the whole).’ 3 Aside from the Circus pictures, all the other works here were made in Paris, where Turnbull lived for two formative years between 1948 and 1950. He’d been inspired to move there by his friend Eduardo Paolozzi and before completing his final year at the Slade, requested a transfer to finish his studies at the Grande Chaumière Art School in Montparnasse. Turnbull wanted to 'escape the prevailing post-war Neo-Romanticism’ of British art at the time, which he found backward-looking and limiting. 4 During his time in Paris, he sought out the avant-garde artists of the day, including Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) and Alberto Giacometti (1901-66). In 1949, partly inspired by the tabletop sculptures he’d seen in Giacometti’s studio, Turnbull began to make a series of sculptures where linear forms were connected to a slab-like base. These were constructed from fine wire armatures and then built up in plaster, some of which he was then able to cast in bronze. Forms on a Base (cat no.1), Torque Upwards (cat no.4), and Maquette for Large Sculpture (cat no.5) (all 1949) belong to this body of work. Although relatively modest in size, they were originally intended to be much larger – as indicated by the title Maquette for Large Sculpture. However, in this early period Turnbull couldn’t afford to pay for further casts at the same size or to realise his maquettes on a bigger scale. The lumpy surfaces and crude, uneven bases of these modelled forms emphasise that they are the direct result of the artist’s hand and evoke the studio as a place of creation. Few of Turnbull’s works from the 1940s have survived, many were destroyed either by the artist himself or as the result of having been left behind in storage in Paris after he returned to London at the end of 1950. As such, these three unique bronzes are extremely rare examples. In each of these three sculptures numerous thin and irregular stick-like forms extend upwards from the sculpture’s base. The base forms an integral part of the composition, determining the relationship between the forms. Some of the vertically extending parts also feature other lengths which branch off horizontally or at an angle. In Torque Upwards these ‘branches’ cut into space in different directions, creating, as the title implies, the impression of a twisting force of energy rising up into the air.

Although ostensibly abstract, these three forms conjure a multiplicity of images rooted in nature and the man-made world. Torque Upwards has a skeletal quality reminiscent of a backbone and rib cage, while also conveying a feeling of rising movement reminiscent of flight. The wavering uprights in Forms on a Base recall both a crowd of moving people and a curious plant rising from the earth. In Maquette for Large Sculpture the variously spaced horizontal lengths call to mind one of Turnbull’s own notes detailing his interest in ‘Objects moving in relation to each other (aircraft in formation) – people in the Metro tunnels walking beside each other and towards one another.’ 5 Unlike in Turnbull’s Hanging Sculpture (1949), where the forms move freely in space, in these static works movement is only suggested. Turnbull pushed this idea further in another of his tabletop sculptures, Game (1949), where the pin-like uprights could be arranged in any permutation in the base, playfully introducing the active participation of the viewer and an element of chance into the work. In 1950, Torque Upwards was included in the seminal exhibition Aspects of British Art at the ICA, and Turnbull also showed a selection of his work from Paris at the Hanover Gallery in a joint show with Eduardo Paolozzi and Kenneth King. 6 Opened by Erica Brausen in 1947, the Hanover Gallery became one of the most notable galleries in London, dealing in 19th and 20th century masters and contemporary British and foreign artists, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Alberto Giacometti. For Turnbull to have the opportunity to show his work at such a reputable gallery at this early point in his career was a significant achievement. Two years later, in 1952, Brausen gave him his first solo exhibition and in the summer he was one of the eleven artists included in New Aspects of British Sculpture in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

In his section of the Hanover Gallery exhibition in 1950, Turnbull showed the original plasters for Maquette for Large Sculpture (cat no.5) and Torque Upwards (cat no.4) alongside those for Aquarium, Mobile Stabile (Coll. Tate, London) and Female Attracts Male (presumed destroyed) (all dated 1949). A series of photographs taken by Nigel Henderson which document the installation of the exhibition are a fascinating and useful record. They show the narrow space on the top floor of the gallery which Turnbull was given to display his work. In some images we see the artist crouching down, experimenting with placing the plasters directly on the floor, while in others we see their final arrangement, on three-legged modelling stands. In one particularly dark photograph, which is difficult to decipher, there also appear to be four paintings or works on paper, including one of the Aquarium collages (cat nos. 2 & 3), hung on the surrounding walls. It’s not clear whether these were included in the final hang, as they don’t appear in other photographs showing the plasters. In this 2022 exhibition, marking the centenary of the artist’s birth, we have returned to this important moment in the artist’s early career, basing our presentation of his early sculptures on Turnbull’s own vision for the 1950 Hanover exhibition.

1 2 3 4

5 6

Published in The Tate Gallery Report, London 1967: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turnbull-mobile-stabile-t00903 William Turnbull cited in Richard Morphet, ‘Commentary,’ William Turnbull, Sculpture and Painting, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1973, p26 The Tate Gallery Report, London 1967, Ibid William Turnbull, in ‘Retrospective Statements,’ The Independent Group: Post War Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty, David Robbins (ed.), Cambridge, Mass, London, MIT Press, 1990, p195 The Tate Gallery Report, London 1967, Ibid The exhibition was organised by their mutual friend David Sylvester

Page 17: William Turnbull at the Hanover Gallery, 1950 Page 18: Turnbull with the original plasters for (front left to front right): Aquarium, Torque Upwards, Mobile Stabile, Female Attracts Male and Maquette for Large Sculpture (all 1949), at the Hanover Gallery, 1950 Page 21: Turnbull with the plaster for Torque Upwards (1949) at the Hanover Gallery, 1950

LIST OF WORKS

Works available for sale are marked with an asterisk * Additional cataloguing for these works can found at the back of the book on pages 197–203

(page 27-29) Forms on a Base (1949) * bronze 33.5 × 50 × 44 cm unique

(page 30) Aquarium (1949) * collage on paper 39.4 × 52.4 cm signed and dated

(page 31) Aquarium (1949) collage on paper 54.4 × 41.3 cm signed and dated

(page 32) Torque Upwards (1949) bronze 59.7 × 42 × 33.5 cm stamped with the artist's monogram and dated unique

(page 33) Maquette for Large Sculpture (1949) bronze 58.5 × 47.9 × 37.1 cm unique

(page 35) Untitled (1949) * oil on canvas 76.2 × 50.8 cm signed twice, dated and inscribed 'Feb 1950' verso

(page 36) Circus (1947) charcoal with newspaper collage on paper 68.6 × 53 cm signed and dated (page 37) Circus (1947) * mixed media on paper 56.5 × 71.1 cm signed and dated

Forms on a Base (1949) *

Aquarium (1949) *

Aquarium (1949)

Torque Upwards (1949)

Maquette for Large Sculpture (1949)

Untitled (1949) *

Circus (1947)

Circus (1947) *

‘ THE SORT OF THING THAT INTERESTED ME WAS – HOW LITTLE WOULD SUGGEST A HEAD HOW MUCH LOAD WILL THE SHAPE TAKE AND STILL READ HEAD HEAD AS COLONY HEAD AS LANDSCAPE HEAD AS MASK HEAS AS IDEOGRAM HEAD AS SIGN, ETC. ’ William Turnbull, in ‘Head semantics’, Theo Crosby (ed.), Uppercase 4, Whitefriars, London, 1960

HEADS & MASKS (1946–1956)

Heads

For Turnbull the head (like the standing figure and the horse) was an archetypal image which recurred throughout art history and was eternally relevant even in the modern world. Since the very beginning of his career Turnbull explored the possibilities of the human head as a subject for his own art. Reflecting on his fascination with this subject in 1960, Turnbull described how, ‘The word ‘Head’ meant for me what I imagined 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 … I wanted to make a head-object as autonomous as a football…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.' 7 One of Turnbull’s earliest recorded sculptures, Mask (1946) (cat no.9) is a flattened head form, shaped like an elongated trapezium and displayed standing upright on a small stone block. The sculpture was originally made from cement, with the details of the face pressed into the surface using string, and it was cast in bronze the following year. As Turnbull intended, although Mask (1946) is highly abstracted, it remains identifiably a head. The form tapers down from a wide ‘forehead,’ to a narrower ‘chin,’ a large triangle indicates the nose, holes become eyes, spirals delineate sockets and a hole surrounded by three semicircles reads as a mouth and lips. Three-dimensional, but also flat and frontal, this object inhabits a space somewhere between sculpture and drawing. Turnbull was interested in prehistoric art, seeking inspiration in ethnographic collections, particularly those held in the British Museum, where he was a regular visitor. He believed that something 3,000 years old could look as modern as something made yesterday. Mask (1946) exemplifies this idea, seeming to exist in a realm beyond time, combining imagery both ancient and modern, abstract and figurative. Having made Mask and another head in plaster in 1946, Turnbull didn’t revive this subject until the early 1950s. His renewed interest in heads and masks may have been sparked by the egg-like heads he saw in Brancusi’s studio in Paris in the late 1940s. But while Brancusi’s heads were smooth, radically reduced forms, Turnbull’s own heads were often highly textured and ranged in detail and legibility, from primitive-looking mask reliefs, through to large ‘head-objects’ with rough, deeply scored surfaces. In this decade, Turnbull also combined a number of his heads

with other elements to create new multipartite sculptures, see for example Sun Gazer (1956), where an earlier sculpture Head (Reclining Head) (1955), is positioned on top of a fluted column. The experimental exhibition The Wonder and Horror of the Human Head held at the ICA in Spring 1953, which examined a wide variety of images of heads across history, also had a profound impact on Turnbull. Herbert Read’s foreword for the accompanying book elucidates why the head has been, and continues to be, of such resonance in art history: ‘The selection of this particular object is not so arbitrary as it might at first seem. The head is not only man’s most dominating feature, in the physical sense – the seat of his controlling intelligence, the judgement of his vision and hearing – it is also his most vulnerable feature. It therefore becomes, as we have said in the title, a thing of wonder and horror. (…) Artists of every kind and of all periods have exploited its power to charm or to terrify, and thus a collection of human heads in art becomes a revealing index of the range of the aesthetic sensibility.’ 8 With these ideas in mind, in the same year as the ICA exhibition, Turnbull created a series of bronze mask reliefs, which were hollow and designed to be mounted directly to the wall (cat nos.10-16). The masks were a continuation of Turnbull’s interest in the tension between the static and mobile: ‘The mask is a marvellous example of the attempt to fix that which is most continuously fleeting and mobile – the expression on a face.’ 9 Aesthetically, however, they were a departure from the sculptures he’d been making to this point, as he described: ‘In 1953 I became dissatisfied with the possibilities of the linear sculpture I had been making for some years. Perhaps it seemed too schematic – too close to intellectual aesthetics. That year I made a series of masks which are concerned with surface as a skin; the division of inside and outside space in volume sculpture. My linear sculpture had been concerned with motion, and later, I realised that a mask is an arrest of movement. I began to try to infer a quality by its opposite.’ 10

Turnbull made his masks by impressing forms into clay and then pouring bronze directly into the resulting dips and hollows. This fast and simple method, (which had been explored earlier by Picasso), was taken up by a number of Turnbull’s contemporaries including Eduardo Paolozzi. The crude nature of the technique gives the masks, with all their magical lumps and bumps, a spontaneous, child-like energy. In these reliefs, mouths are tilted and off-centre, left eyes are different sizes and shapes to the right and are, like the ears, not aligned. In gallery shows, and in his studio, Turnbull liked to display the masks all together in a scattered formation which highlighted their individual personalities. Alongside his sculpture, in the same period, Turnbull produced a large volume of paintings, works on paper and prints on the subject of the head. He eschewed naturalistic detail, creating abstract heads which gave the impression of, rather than directly translated, the subject, as he explained: ‘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.’ 11 To explore this idea, Turnbull experimented widely using different painterly marks, varying his palette and working on different scales. In Head, 1955 (cat no.20) for example, he uses wide, intersecting black brushstrokes on a white ground, while in the large canvas Head (1956) (cat no.17) he reduces his head motif to a field of dynamic marks in an array of colours. In addition to these calligraphic marks, a series of paint splatters radiate out from the edges of the head and neck like sun beams, showing the trace of the artist’s hand, in the manner of Pollock. The composition of this painting directly mirrors the small bronze Head Relief (1955) (cat no.18) made the year before, showing Turnbull’s ability to move fluently between two and three dimensions. Meanwhile, Head (1956) (cat no.19) speaks more quietly, the hazy silhouettes of the heads emerging mysteriously from a similarly coloured background. While Turnbull explored this subject throughout his career, in the pages that follow you will find a focused selection of heads covering the years 1946 to 1956. As a group, these works demonstrate Turnbull’s creative genius and his willingness to explore a single motif to its limits.

7 8

Ibid Herbert Read, ‘Foreword,’ Wonder and Horror of the Human Head, An Anthology, Lund Humphries, London, 1953, p5 9 William Turnbull, Statement, in Theo Crosby (ed.), Uppercase 4, Whitefriars, London, 1960, unpaginated 10 William Turnbull, letter, cited in The Artist’s Reality, An International Sculpture Exhibition, exh. cat., New School Art Center, New York City, 1964, unpaginated 11 William Turnbull, ‘Head semantics’, in Theo Crosby (ed.), Uppercase 4, Whitefriars, London, 1960

Page 39: William Turnbull, c1952 Page 40: Turnbull, Head (1955) (detail) Page 43: Turnbull’s Mask 1-7 in the garden c1960s or 1970s. Photograph by Kim Lim

LIST OF WORKS

Works available for sale are marked with an asterisk * Additional cataloguing for these works can found at the back of the book on pages 197–203 Works not included in the exhibition are marked with △

|10

(page 49) Mask (1946) * bronze 39.4 × 24 × 1.6 cm (bronze) inscribed with the artist's initial, stamped with date AC from an edition of 4 plus 1 AC

(page 50) Mask 1 (1953) bronze 23 × 20.5 × 7 cm stamped with the artist's monogram, dated and numbered 1/2

|14

|15

|16 |11

(page 51) Mask 2 (1953) bronze 27.3 × 24.1 × 7 cm stamped with the artist's monogram, dated and numbered 2/2 |17

|12

(page 52, top) Mask 3 (1953) bronze 21.6 × 21.6 × 7.6 cm stamped with the artist's monogram, dated and numbered 2/2 |18

|13

(page 52, bottom) Mask 4 (1953) bronze 22.9 × 26 × 6.3 cm stamped with the artist's monogram, dated and numbered 2/2

(page 53, top) Mask 5 (1953) bronze 24.2 × 24 × 7.5 cm stamped with the artist's monogram, dated and numbered 1/2

(page 53, bottom) Mask 6 (1953) bronze 22.9 × 22.9 × 4.4 cm edition of 2

(page 55) Mask 7 (1953) bronze 22.9 × 21 × 7.6 cm stamped with the artist's monogram, dated and numbered 2/2

(page 57) Head (1956) oil on canvas 153.7 × 112.4 cm signed and dated verso (detail page 56)

(page 59) Head Relief (1955) △ bronze 52.7 × 39.4 × 1.6 cm unnumbered, from an edition of 4 plus 1 AC

|19

|20

(page 61) Head (1956) * oil and sand on canvas 76 × 63.5 cm signed and dated verso

(page 63) Head (1955) * oil on canvas 76.5 × 65.4 cm signed and dated twice verso

Mask (1946) *

|10

Mask 1 (1953)

|11

Mask 2 (1953)

|12 |13

Mask 3 (1953) Mask 4 (1953)

|14 |15

Mask 5 (1953) Mask 6 (1953)

|16

Mask 7 (1953)

|17

Head (1956)

|18

Head Relief (1955) *

|19

Head (1956) *

|20

Head (1955) *

‘ I USED TEXTURE TO INVOKE CHANCE, TO CREATE RANDOM DISCOVERIES, NOT TO ELABORATE THE SURFACE, BUT TO ACCENTUATE THAT IT WAS A SKIN OF BRONZE. ’

William Turnbull, Statement, in Theo Crosby (ed.), Uppercase 4, Whitefriars, London, 1960, unpaginated

IDOLS & THE EXPRESSIVE IMAGE (1955–1988)

Page 65: William Turnbull in his studio in Hampstead, 1959, Photograph by Kim Lim Page 66: William Turnbull Tate retrospective, 1973, Photograph by Kim Lim, Left to right: Totemic Figure (1957); Female Figure (1955); Idol 1 (1955); Idol 4 (1956); Standing Female Figure (1955) and Screwhead (1957)

Idols & The Expressive Image

Expanding on the theme of the head, in the mid-1950s Turnbull began what was to be an extended body of sculpture, which continued into the early-2000s, on the theme of ‘Idols’ and ‘Standing Figures.’ These full-size bronze figures, which were invariably vertical and freestanding, were representations of divine beings. Soon afterwards, within his painting, Turnbull began to remove the figurative references present in his earlier head paintings, taking them in a new, more abstract direction which developed in dialogue with the sculpture he was now making. Highly distinctive, yet also depersonalised, Turnbull’s figures have faces devoid of descriptive detail. In the leaflike figure, Paddle Venus 2 (1986) (cat no.30) for example, the slightest suggestion of the bridge of a nose is enough to convey the sense of a face. Height, then, becomes a defining characteristic, particularly as the forms themselves are often very slender and flat. Smaller than lifesize, Female Figure (1955) (cat no.21) stands at around 120 centimetres tall, while Idol (1988) (cat no.31) the tallest, towers 80 centimetres above it. While the forms are recognisably, and emotionally, human, the lack of figurative detail grants them a more symbolic function, suggesting ritual and worship. As David Sylvester put it, ‘There’s a quality in some of Turnbull’s figures which creates an expectation that, if some of them were placed in a simple well-lit building, it would become a temple.’ 12 Unlike Turnbull’s heads where gender is unclear, all of the figures in this group are identifiably female. Their bodies often include breasts, which in three of the works are sculpted and in two others are drawn onto the surface as triangles. In Standing Female Figure (1955) (cat no.23), a long ponytail falls to one side of the figure’s head and in Idol (1988), long hair is denoted more subtly by repeating vertical lines scored into the back of the head. These sculptures, which feel, simultaneously, ancient and modern, demonstrate Turnbull’s interests in pre-history, non-western cultures and 20th-century abstraction and this is reflected in their titles. Aphrodite (1958) (cat no.24) and Paddle Venus 2 (1986) refer to the Greek and Roman goddesses of love, fertility, prosperity and victory and their forms to Cycladic art; while War Goddess (1956) (cat no.26), Totemic Figure (1957) (cat no.27) and Aphrodite (1958) are stacked up like carved African totems. Turnbull’s work in the 1980s focused, for the most part, on heads, masks, tools and upright figures, as we see reflected in the silhouette of Paddle Venus 2. The archaeological, ‘dug-up’ look of the earlier works is developed in this decade through a number of blade and spade forms – some small, others large – that carry the aura of ancient cultures and the ground beneath them.

Turnbull made these figures by building up plaster over a metal armature, before modelling the surface to varying degrees, and casting the final form in bronze using the traditional lost wax technique. Turnbull took pleasure in the improvisational possibilities of working into wet plaster. He declared, ‘I used texture to invoke chance, to create random discoveries, not to elaborate the surface, but to accentuate that it was a skin of bronze.’ 13 In Female Figure, Standing Female Figure and Aphrodite, he has impressed corrugated paper into the wet plaster in different directions, creating a rich patchwork of textures which give the impression the figures have been battered, brutalised or even resurrected from the earth. In contrast, War Goddess, and later works Paddle Venus 2 and Idol have smoother surfaces, on which we see inscribed Turnbull’s characteristic wobbly lines and imperfect patterns of dots. In the exhibition catalogue for the artist’s 1957 solo exhibition at the ICA, Lawrence Alloway describes how: ‘Turnbull responded to the surface of his solid sculptures with a sense of discovery that traditional sculptors, to whom sculpture was anything but solid, can rarely feel. Since he was a modeller working with a soft material it was natural for him to think of the surface as a receptive plane, inviting inscription and elaboration, like wet sand on the seashore or a wall in a city. He used the surface of his sculptures to record in dramatic textures and marks the events of the creative act.’ 14 Turnbull always paid close attention to the finish of his bronzes. In the early years he would colour the bronzes himself, later on he supervised their patination at the foundry. He sought to create new experiences of the same form by varying the patinations within a single edition. There are wonderful variations across the idols presented here – from dark brown, to lighter ochre-brown and iron-red, through to pistachio and aquamarine. These sculptures have rich and multi-faceted surfaces with hints of underlying colours showing through. The textures and tonal variations within these bronzes find their equivalence in the large canvases Turnbull was making in the 1950s. Alloway outlines this affinity, stating ‘Painting is as physical a business as sculpture now that painters recognise the specific properties of paint as contributing to the work of art. Turnbull’s paintings, with their clear stress on the skin of paint bearing the brush or knife mark, thus extend the sculptor’s recognition of the reality of his materials into painting.’ 15

In the 1950s Turnbull was keenly aware of current artistic developments in America. In 1953, the Museum of Modern Art in New York established its International Program, an initiative to send MoMA exhibitions around the world to cities including London, which meant that British artists and the wider public became increasingly exposed to exciting transatlantic developments. In 1956 the Tate staged the landmark exhibition Modern Art in the United States: A Selection from the Collections of the Museum of Modern Art, which included a room devoted to Contemporary Abstract Art which divided critics. Inspired by what he saw, in 1957 Turnbull flew to North America where he met first-hand three figures at the forefront of the Abstract Expressionist movement: Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Helen Frankenthaler. Back in London, in 1958 the ICA exhibited paintings by Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still in its exhibition Some Pictures from the E.J. Power Collection. The Whitechapel Gallery also played an important role in bringing American art to Britain, by holding a series of solo exhibitions of American artists, beginning with Jackson Pollock in 1958. Turnbull’s own paintings increased in size, as he strove for ‘a dynamic between the painting as object and as surface experience’. He reduced his palette, creating monochromatic or duochromatic abstract paintings including Landscape (1957) (cat no.25), 10-1958 (1958) (cat no.22), 5-1958 (1958) (cat no.29) and 29-1958 (1958) (cat no.28), which focused on a small number of formal concerns – line, shape, form, tone and texture. This group of paintings suggest a range of influences. The scarlet red band at the top of Landscape recalls the bands of colour in Rothko’s paintings, while the scratchy white brushstrokes recall the gestural marks of Jackson Pollock’s and, also, Japanese calligraphy. Turnbull had been exposed to eastern culture first through his travels as a pilot in the RAF (1941-46) and, later, his relationship with the Singaporean sculptor Kim Lim, who he married in 1960. Turnbull used calligraphic mark-making in various paintings, including his series of black and white head paintings from 1955 (cat no.20).

The title of the notionally abstract work Landscape refers to the landscape tradition, but Turnbull’s entry point was not the land as seen at ground level, but rather as experienced from above. The time he spent flying planes in the RAF offered a radical new perspective on the natural environment and fundamentally changed the way he saw the world, as he explained: ‘The main thing about flying for me was the fact that the world didn’t any longer look like a Dutch landscape; it looked like an abstract painting. You looked down and you realised that so much of what one felt was true depended on where you were standing to look at it... this experience of having three different fields of movement, where you’ve got up and down and sideways...You have an extraordinary spatial feeling, and there are certain aspects of it that are very primitive...There was this sense at night where you feel you are flying away from the world, this flying into a kind of blackness.’ 16 17 With its sweeping, gestural marks 10-1958 is a painting alive with movement, energy and emotion. Comprising a single colour over an unmodulated white ground, Turnbull’s turbulent indigo brushstrokes suggest forceful winds, the ocean and the night sky. Executed across three large canvases and measuring nearly four and a half metres wide, this painting has the hallmarks of an Abstract Expressionist painting.

12 David Sylvester, ‘Introduction: Bronze Idols and Untitled Paintings’, William Turnbull, Sculpture and Paintings, exh. cat., Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995, p9 13 William Turnbull, Statement, in Theo Crosby (ed.), Uppercase 4, Whitefriars, London, 1960, unpaginated 14 Lawrence Alloway in William Turnbull: New Sculpture and Paintings, exh. cat., The Institute of Contemporary Arts Gallery, London,1957, unpaginated 15 Ibid 16 ‘William Turnbull in conversation with Colin Renfrew, 6 May 1998,’ William Turnbull, Sculpture and Paintings, exh. cat., Waddington Galleries, London, 1998, p7 17 The British painter Peter Lanyon, who was also a pilot in the war (and later took up gliding) was exploring similar themes at this time. When Turnbull was in New York in 1957 when Lanyon had his first solo exhibition with the Catherine Viviano Gallery.

William Turnbull and Kim Lim with Standing Female Figure (1955) and Horse (1954), 1957

LIST OF WORKS

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(page 76-77) Female Figure (1955) △ bronze 121.3 × 41.9 × 34.9 cm stamped with the artist's monogram, dated and numbered 2/4 from an edition of 4 plus 1 AC (detail page 75)

(page 78-79) 10-1958 (1958) oil on canvas (triptych) 198.1 × 442 cm (overall) signed and dated on centre canvas verso

(page 80-81) Standing Female Figure (1955) * bronze 160.7 × 36.8 × 40.6 cm stamped with the artist's monogram and dated AC from an edition of 4 plus 1 AC

(page 84-85) Aphrodite (1958) bronze 190.5 × 73.7 × 50.2 cm stamped with the artist's monogram, dated and inscribed AC from an edition of 4 plus 1 AC (detail page 82-83)

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(page 86) Landscape (1957) oil and sand on canvas 112.5 × 150 cm signed, dated, titled and inscribed ‘Winter’ verso; signed and dated again on canvas overlap (detail page 87)

(page 88-89) War Goddess (1956) bronze 161.3 × 48.3 × 40.6 cm stamped with the artist's monogram, dated and numbered 3/4 from an edition of 4

(page 92-93) Totemic Figure (1957) * bronze 152.4 × 43.2 × 35.6 cm stamped with the artist's monogram and dated 1/4, from an edition of 4 (detail page 90-91)

(page 95) 29-1958 (1958) * oil on canvas 152.4 × 152.4 cm signed, dated and titled twice verso

(page 96) 5-1958 (1958) oil on linen 152.4 × 152.4 cm (detail page 97)

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(page 98) Paddle Venus 2 (1986) * bronze 198 × 36 × 30.5 cm stamped with the artist's monogram, dated and numbered 4/4 from an edition of 4 plus 1 AC (detail page 99)

(page 102-3) Idol (1988) * bronze 201.9 × 60.3 × 40 cm stamped with the artist's monogram, dated and inscribed AC from an edition of 4 plus 1 AC (detail page 101)

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Female Figure (1955)

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10-1958 (1958)

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Standing Female Figure (1955) *

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Aphrodite (1958)

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Landscape (1957)

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War Goddess (1956)

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Totemic Figure (1957) *

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29-1958 (1958) *

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5-1958 (1958)

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Paddle Venus 2 (1986) *

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Idol (1988) *

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‘ SCULPTURE USED TO LOOK ‘MODERN’: NOW WE MAKE OBJECTS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN DUG UP AT ANY TIME DURING THE PAST FORTY THOUSAND YEARS. ’

William Turnbull, Statement, ‘Group One: Theo Crosby, William Turnbull, Germano Facetti, Edward Wright,’ This is Tomorrow, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1956, pp1-4

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ANCESTRAL LANDS (1958–1963)

Ancestral Lands

In 1955, around the same time Turnbull began his series of ‘Idols’ and ‘Standing Figures’, he also began working on a seminal sequence of sculptures comprising two or more variously combined elements in bronze, stone or wood (rosewood and ebony). Visually recalling totems, the sculptures within this series carry associations of ancient lands, myth, ritual and ancestral lineages. Together, they echo the scale and presence of the human body in space while drawing on abstracted, simplified forms. Placed directly on the ground, Turnbull allowed each sculpture to exist within the sphere of human activity, their scale relative to, and reliant upon, the position of the viewer. Turnbull’s totems have clear affinities with the pioneering stacked sculptures of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) which he’d seen first-hand at the artist’s studio in Paris in the late 1940s. However, unlike Brancusi, who aimed to achieve the modernist principle of ‘absolute harmony’ within his forms, Turnbull’s totems - unsymmetrical and weathered in appearance - give the impression they ‘might have been dug up at any time during the past forty thousand years.’ 18 Turnbull’s stacking idiom began with Horse (1954) (Coll. Tate Gallery, London) (cat no.52) and a year later, he used the same process to create Hannibal (1955), the first example to suggest a standing human figure. These totems were, for the most part, upright figures personifying gods and goddesses (Aphrodite, Janus), kings (Agamemnon 19, Oedipus), warriors (Hannibal), teachers (Lama 20), priestesses (Hero 21 ) and voyagers (Ulysses). The otherworldly names Turnbull assigned his sculptures, underlined his sense of them as ‘person-objects’, he explained later that these forms ‘stand substitute for’ and are not ‘abstractions from’ the human figure. 22 Writing in 1960, Turnbull declared ‘I like the emotional contrast set off by combining bronze, wood, and stone – just bronze, and more bronze everywhere is becoming a bore’ and in his totems, he stressed the unique properties of each material. 23 The bronze elements were either modelled and cast by Turnbull specifically for the work, or were made from pre-existing sculptures and cast forms from his studio – see for example Hero 1 (1958) (cat no.37) and Lama (1961) (cat no.40), where the bronze ‘head’ is stamped with the earlier date ‘57’. In contrast, Turnbull usually found the wood and stone sections in timber and masonry yards. Open to considering objects of any proportion or shape, Turnbull allowed himself to be guided and inspired by the materials available to him. Once selected, he would make only minimal changes to the wood or stone, seeking to retain the material’s natural characteristics. Turnbull took

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this idea of ‘truth to materials’ from Japanese (and East Asian) art, a long-standing influence on his work which was deepened by his relationship with Kim Lim, who specialised in carving. In Spring Totem 2 (1962-63) (cat no.36) Turnbull has incorporated part of the trunk of a rosewood tree. Keeping the basic form intact, he has chiselled a series of repetitive marks into the outer surface, in a manner which parallels the expressive marks and textured surfaces found in his paintings. Turnbull has placed this, originally upright, form on its side, on top of the stone section, the resulting image recalling both a felled tree and a figure with outstretched arms. In these sculptures Turnbull returns to the theme of balance. This is particularly evident in Lama (1961) - where a large bronze sphere sits on a thinner wooden column, which is itself placed on an even thinner column in bronze - and in Spring Totem 2 – in which a tiny bronze sphere balances precariously on a ‘T’ shaped wooden beam as though it might roll off at any moment. Agamemnon (1962) (cat no.32), one of Turnbull’s last works in the totem series, is the only sculpture to include a carved aperture which runs from front to back. Here, the precisely carved internal plane appears to ripple as the light falls across it. The introduction of negative space opens up the form and heightens the sculpture’s relationship to the surrounding environment. Identifying Agamemnon, along with Oedipus and Magellan, as sculptures where Turnbull reaches a ‘high point of silent expressive intensity’, Richard Morphet noted in 1973 how these works ‘focus and embody the idea of human activity (both of sculptor, and of past, present and future spectator/ participants)’, resembling ‘portals or altars and, more strongly than ever totems.’ 24 Indeed Agamemnon has a notably similar form to the North American Indian Doorway Totem Pole, c1897 in the British Museum and it’s likely Turnbull would have seen this or other examples.

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In the early 1960s Turnbull produced a series of large abstract paintings comprising a single, wavering, vertical line. These images echoed the verticality of the totem sculptures, while also suggesting landscapes and rivers as seen from above. Turnbull found the experience of flying profoundly moving and it informed his subsequent conceptualisation of the landscape; alternative ways of thinking about people and places, about lines of descent and ascent, came into focus, as he later reflected: ‘The main thing about flying for me was the fact that the world didn’t any longer look like a Dutch landscape; it looked like an abstract painting. You looked down and you realised that so much of what one felt was true depended on where you were standing to look at it... this experience of having three different fields of movement, where you’ve got up and down and sideways...You have an extraordinary spatial feeling, and there are certain aspects of it that are very primitive...There was this sense at night where you feel you are flying away from the world, this flying into a kind of blackness.’ 25 In the paintings 26-1963 (cat no.33) and 11-1963 (cat no.39) Turnbull has painted this vertical line with his brush, whereas in 24-1963 (cat no.34) and 14-1963 (cat no.38) the central passage is unpainted, the line instead formed inversely, by the expanse of paint surrounding it. The composition of these paintings parallel colour field paintings by Barnett Newman, who would also use one or more vertical bands of colour, which he referred to as ‘zips.’ Military service took Turnbull around the world to countries including India and Sri Lanka. These travels exposed him to non-western cultures, widening his cultural experience and visual vocabulary. The yellow of 24-1963 evokes the barren landscape of the desert, while the greens of 11-1963 and 14-1963 and 26-1963 suggest fertile landscapes and the jungle. 18 William Turnbull, Statement, ‘Group One: Theo Crosby, William Turnbull, Germano Facetti, Edward Wright,’ This is Tomorrow, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1956, pp1-4 19 Agamemnon was the king of Mycenae and a warrior who led the Greek army in the Trojan War. 20 Lama is the word for a teacher of the Dharma in Tibetan Buddhism. 21 Hero was a Greek priestess who drowned herself following the death of her lover Leander. 22 William Turnbull, ‘Images without Temples,’ Living Arts, ed. Theo Crosby and John Bodley, 1963, p15 23 William Turnbull, Statement, in Theo Crosby (ed.), Uppercase 4, Whitefriars, London, 1960, unpaginated 24 Richard Morphet, ‘Commentary,’ William Turnbull, Sculpture and Painting, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1973, p42 25 ‘William Turnbull in conversation with Colin Renfrew, 6 May 1998,’ William Turbull, Sculpture and Paintings, exh. cat., Waddington Galleries, London, 1998, p7

Page 105: William Turnbull, 1964 Page 106: William Turnbull’s studio in Hampstead, c1960s Left to right: Agamemnon (1962), Hannibal (1955), Drum Head (1955), Hero 1 or Hero 2 (1958), Photograph by Kim Lim Page 108-9: William Turnbull retrospective exhibition, Tate Gallery, London, 1973 Page 110-11: William Turnbull’s studio in Hampstead, c1962, Photograph by Kim Lim

LIST OF WORKS

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Works available for sale are marked with an asterisk * Additional cataloguing for these works can found at the back of the book on pages 197–203

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(page 120-21) Agamemnon (1962) * bronze, rosewood and stone 170.2 × 45.7 × 46.5 cm stamped with the artist’s monogram on bronze section unique (detail page 119)

(page 122) 26-1963 (1963) oil on canvas 203.2 × 152.4 cm titled verso Private Collection, UK

(page 123) 24-1963 (1963) * oil on canvas 203.2 × 152.4 cm titled verso

(page 125) Oedipus 3 (1962) bronze, rosewood and stone 193.7 (height) × 48.3 (diameter) cm stamped with the artist's monogram and dated on bronze column unique Private Collection (detail page 124)

(page 126-27) Spring Totem 2 (1962-63) bronze, rosewood and stone 101.6 × 155 × 44.5 cm unique Private Collection

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(page 129) Hero 1 (1958) bronze and stone 104.1 × 46.6 × 66 cm stamped with the artist’s monogram and dated ‘57’ on bronze section unique Private Collection (detail page 128)

(page 130) 14-1963 (1963) oil on canvas 152.4 × 152.4 cm signed and dated verso

(page 131) 11-1963 (1963) * oil on canvas 152.4 × 152.4 cm titled verso

(page 133) |40 Lama (1961) bronze and rosewood 154.9 cm (height) stamped with the artist’s monogram on both bronze sections, dated '57' on top bronze section unique Private Collection (detail page 132)

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Agamemnon (1962) *

120

121

122

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26-1963 (1963)

123

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24-1963 (1963) *

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Oedipus 3 (1962)

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125

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Spring Totem 2 (1962-63)

126

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128

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Hero 1 (1958)

129

130

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14-1963 (1963)

131

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11-1963 (1963) *

|40 Lama (1961)

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‘ I’D LIKE TO BE ABLE TO MAKE ONE SATURATED FIELD OF COLOUR, SO THAT YOU WOULDN’T FEEL YOU WERE SHORT OF ALL THE OTHERS. ’

William Turnbull, Statement, in Theo Crosby (ed.), Uppercase 4, Whitefriars, London, 1960, unpaginated

COLOUR & STEEL (1964–1972)

Colour & Steel

Following the completion of his series of totem sculptures in 1962, Turnbull sought to take his work in a new direction. Up until this point the sculptures he’d been producing could all be described as appearing ancient, yet modern. From 1963 to 1972 Turnbull made sculptures which were informed by American Minimalism. He often created repeating sequences of objects and worked with industrial materials and processes. This new phase exemplified the enthusiasm of British artists at that time for American art and culture. By the 1960s America had become the cultural point of reference in the art world. Following the impactful Tate exhibition Modern Art in the United States in 1956, American art was shown more widely in Britain. Three years later the Tate mounted The New American Painting – the first large survey of abstract expressionism in Britain – which both shocked and divided critics. The Whitechapel Gallery was also responsible for expanding awareness of American art in Britain from 1958-1966 by presenting a series of solo exhibitions by American artists. 26 In 1963, the Royal Academy of Arts held Art: USA: Now, an exhibition showcasing contemporary American paintings, 27 and Sculpture: Open-air Exhibition of Contemporary British and American Works opened at Battersea Park, allowing the public to experience and compare recent British and American sculpture in an outdoor setting. In these years Turnbull’s paintings increased in size, as he set about creating colour fields which immersed the viewer and created what he later described as ‘a dynamic between the painting as object and as surface experience.’ 28 At over five metres wide, 1-1972 (1972) (cat no.48) is one of the largest and most extraordinary paintings Turnbull ever made. In his sculpture, Turnbull turned to industrial materials, welding steel, as well as exploring aluminium, wood and fibreglass and Perspex, creating works on an environmental scale. The sculptures and paintings he produced in this period have a meditative quality which prompted the viewer to become more aware of their own body in relation to the artwork and more alive to subtle shifts in perception as their viewing experience is affected by time and space. Although Turnbull’s sculpture and painting were two separate strands of his practice, there was much crossfertilisation and, in this period, the parallels between his two practices are more apparent than ever before. 29 Turnbull’s colour field paintings and his painted steel sculptures are both large to monumental in scale. They typically had unmodulated, flatly painted surfaces (with the exception of a small number of polished steel works) and

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were executed in colours designed to have an immediate visual impact. More figurative paintings, such as 15-1965 (cat no.42) also exhibit a similar visual vocabulary to the forms of steel sculptures like Ripple (1966-72) (cat no.43) and No.3 (1964) (cat no.41). The sculptures which follow are all made from steel, a material Turnbull worked with for a 9 year period. While Turnbull was, by this stage, an experienced sculptor in his forties, the materials he wanted to work with were new to him and so required him to acquire new technical skills. Turnbull learned to arc weld and grind steel from Brian Wall while they were both teaching sculpture at the Central School of Art and Design. During his time at the college (1964-72), Turnbull made use of the foundry and metal workshop in the basement of the sculpture department, creating steel sculptures alongside Wall and the students. To make his painted steel sculptures Turnbull would cut the steel, weld pieces together, sand blast and zinc-coat them, before spraying them with industrial paint to give an even finish. He invariably chose a gloss finish, unlike other artists working in painted steel, including Anthony Caro, who preferred a matt paint surface. Turnbull was aiming for a hardness to the surface and a reflective quality which, in his words, would ‘let the world in’. 30 In 1969, Turnbull talked about this recent period and specifically the role colour played in his sculptures: ‘I am not concerned with the creating of hermetic abstract works, but with non-figurative work that is the result of a powerful subjective response to things seen, particularly banal things, combined with a dialogue with art, so that there is a strong but ambiguous interaction between them. My increasing response to industrially produced raw materials (channel, angle, corrugation) used with as little modification as possible, and the factual rather than expressive quality of the surface, necessitate an industrial finish, both as an emotive response and as a method of controlling light. I don’t want colour to be expressive separately from material or structure. This is probably why I don’t use exotic colours. I am not interested in using colour to destroy weight. Colour isn’t new to my work, nor new to sculpture. When I was working in bronze or plaster I was just as concerned about colour and light as now. Although colour contributes very significantly to the emotive quality, I’ve not seen a sculpture where altering colour would be as radical a change of meaning as changing shape or structure.’ 31

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Of the five steel sculptures included in this exhibition, Ripple is the only unpainted work. 32 It belongs to a small group of angle-grinded stainless-steel works which also includes Duct (1966), Steps (1967-68), Angle (1971-72) and Gate (1972). In these works, the sanded marks introduce a ‘painterly’ approach to the medium of sculpture, just as Turnbull brought a ‘sculptural’ understanding of the canvas to his painting practice. Here, in Ripple, Turnbull unites the original river form shape with a shimmering silver surface. In the Living Arts journal in 1963, Turnbull spoke of his admiration for Monet’s Nymphéas and this series of paintings is perhaps a reference point for these sculptures whose surfaces imitate the effect of light on water. While the simplicity, modularity and repetition displayed in the works from this period have a close connection to Minimalism, Turnbull’s upright steel sculptures do not entirely fit within this movement – where, as Frank Stella said, ‘What you see is what you see’ – because they are inherently, albeit subtly, figurative and as such are part of a long sequence of standing figures within his oeuvre. Richard Morphet has commented on the ‘antennae-like’ shape of works like No.3; they are, he says, ‘like lingering particular vestiges of a human presence in Turnbull’s sculpture.’ 33 In 1973, the Tate Gallery mounted a major retrospective exhibition of Turnbull’s work, curated by Richard Morphet. On seeing so many different aspects of his work displayed together in this isolated setting Turnbull was prompted to rethink the direction in which he was going. His response was to revert back to and expand upon on the themes he had explored earlier, and to once again make bronze sculptures from plaster models which he could model directly with his hands.

26 The Whitechapel Gallery’s solo exhibitions for American artists included: Jackson Pollock (1958); Mark Rothko (1961); Mark Tobey (1962), Philip Guston (1963); Robert Rauschenberg (1964); Franz Kline (1964); Jasper Johns (1964); Morris Louis (1965); Lee Krasner (1965) and Robert Motherwell (1966) 27 Works shown were owned by Herbert Fiske and Irene Purcell Johnson, who had a large collection of works by over 100 American artists, which they exhibited internationally before donating the collection to the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., in 1966. 28 ‘William Turnbull in conversation with Colin Renfrew, 6 May 1998,’ William Turnbull, Sculpture and Paintings, exh. cat., Waddington Galleries, London, 1998, p7 29 Turnbull’s development as both a painter and sculptor dates back to his early art education. In 1946, Turnbull enrolled on the painting course at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. However, the school championed neo-Romanticism - the pervading movement in London at this time and Turnbull found restrictive and nostalgic. It was not long before he transferred over to the sculpture department. 30 Richard Morphet, William Turnbull, The Alistair McAlpine Gift, Tate Gallery, London, 1971, p115 31 ‘Colour in Sculpture, Statements by Phillip King, Tim Scott, David Annesley and William Turnbull’, Studio International, Volume 177, no.907, January 1969, p24 32 Ripple, 1966 is in fact the second version of an identical sculpture made four years earlier which Turnbull painted a warm, earthy brown. The unpainted version was shown in his retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1973. 33 Richard Morphet, ‘William Turnbull’, The Alistair McAlpine Gift, Tate Gallery, London, 1971, p113

Page 135: William Turnbull in his Studio, 1960s. Photograph by Kim Lim Page 136: Works by Turnbull in progress, Left to right: Ripple (1966-72), No.3 (1964) and Two (1965) Page 138-39: Offer Waterman booth of Turnbull works at Art Basel Miami, 2017. Left to right: Ripple (1966-72), Negative Green (1961), Duct (1966), Untitled (Yellow Violet Arc) (1962) Page 141: Portrait of the artist in front of Ripple (1966-72). Photograph by Andrew Caitlin

Page 142: The artist’s studio. Photograph by Kim Lim Page 143: Works by William Turnbull exhibited at the IX Bienal, British Pavilion, São Paulo, Brazil, 3 x 1 (1966) and No.3 (1964) in foreground

LIST OF WORKS

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(page 150-51) No.3 (1964) * steel painted blue 257.8 × 45.7 × 38.1 cm unique (detail page 149)

(page 153) 15-1965 (1965) * oil on canvas 254 × 188 cm signed and titled on canvas overlap; signed on both stretcher bars

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(page 154) Ripple (1966-1972) * stainless steel 227.3 × 58.4 × 58.4 cm unique (detail page 155)

(page 157) 7-1970 (1970) * acrylic on canvas 254 × 139.7 cm titled and inscribed ‘Cryla and Mon. Blue + White’ on stretcher bar

(page 158-59) 3 x 1 (1966) steel painted red (in three parts) 255.3 × 78.7 × 78.7 cm (each) unique

(page 160-61) 17-1970 (1970) * oil on canvas 254 × 457.2 cm

(page 162) Echo (1966) △ steel painted white 157.5 × 188 × 73 cm unique (detail page 163)

(page 164-65) 1-1972 (1972) * oil on canvas 254 × 558.8 cm

(page 166-67) 12-1965 (1965) * acrylic / synthetic polymer on canvas 254 × 406.4 cm signed, dated and titled on canvas overlap

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No.3 (1964) *

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15-1965 (1965) *

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153

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Ripple (1966-1972) *

154

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7-1970 (1970) *

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157

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3 x 1 (1966)

159

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17-1970 (1970) *

161

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Echo (1966) *

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1-1972 (1972) *

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12-1965 (1965) *

167

‘ (…) WHEN I MAKE HORSES’ HEADS – I HAVE DONE THEM PRETTY WELL EVER SINCE THE BEGINNING – IT’S ALWAYS BEEN WITH THIS IDEA OF HAVING A METAPHORIC QUALITY. BUT ALSO WITH ONLY PART OF THE HORSE IS REPRESENTED, YOU DIDN’T FEEL THAT THE REST OF THE HORSE IS MISSING. THAT HAS ALWAYS FASCINATED ME IN SCULPTURE WHERE THE PART CAN BECOME THE WHOLE. ’ William Turnbull in conversation with Colin Renfrew, 6 May 1998,’ William Turnbull, Sculpture and Paintings, exh. cat., Waddington Galleries, London, 1998, p8

HORSE, POWER & PRESENCE (1946–2000)

Horse, Power & Presence

In addition to the head and standing figure, the horse was another of Turnbull’s enduring themes which he returned to time and again within his sculpture. The physical power of this animal and its myriad associations with war, history and mythology, offered an ideal subject for a sculptor whose work was both timeless and at the same time astonishingly modern. Over the decades Turnbull handled this subject in radically different ways, on both smaller and larger scales and as a body of work they demonstrate the artist’s imaginative vision. ‘What interests me about it, as well as some other things found in African sculpture, is how the part can represent the whole. I mean that when you see that horse’s head you feel the whole horse, in the same way when you see some African mask, whether it’s from a rabbit or a leopard and you can feel the whole animal is in that one component. And when I make horses’ heads – I have done them pretty well ever since the beginning – it’s always been with this idea of having a metaphoric quality. But also with only part of the horse is represented, you didn’t feel that the rest of the horse is missing. That has always fascinated me in sculpture where the part can become the whole. For instance, it used to puzzle me, when I saw portrait heads, the sense there of amputation. There should be a tension between the sculpture as object and what it represents. I don’t want to look at the sculpture and feel that anything is missing. So when I make my Heads, they have to be a head that looks that way from the start.’ 34 One of William Turnbull’s earliest recorded sculptures was of a horse’s head Horse (1946) (cat no.50). Made while he was still a student at the Slade, Turnbull created this highly experimental work by modelling plaster over a metal armature and painting it yellow, only later casting it in bronze. At the time, Turnbull was a regular visitor to the British Museum, which was only a short walk from the art school. The horse's strong profile and arched neck is reminiscent of classical Greek sculptures in the museum’s collection, such as Fragments of Colossal Horses from the Quadriga of the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos, 350 B.C. and The Horse of Selene, c.438-432 B.C., a fragment from the Parthenon. Made up of a series of interlocking planes the sculpture also has Cubist overtones. While much of Turnbull’s later sculpture is frontal and direct, the multiple viewpoints offered up by Horse (1946) mean it is best appreciated in the round. Three holes represent the horse’s eyes: a pair of holes indicate the eyes when viewed from the front, while a third hole (cut into a different plane) is only visible when the horse is viewed in profile. These holes also have the effect of opening up this rather blocky form by introducing light and space.

171

By the time Turnbull came to make his next Horse in 1950 (cat no.51), he was living in Paris. Keen to distance himself from the influence of Cubism, which he saw as a ready-made language, his sculptures in Paris were playful, absurdist works, with a calligraphic sense of line, like drawings in space. Like other works made in Paris, Horse, 1950, was formed from a metal armature, which was then roughly covered in plaster and then cast in bronze. It describes an entire horse, albeit with details radically reduced, stood directly on the ground. The straddled legs suggest it might be based on a toy horse, toys and games being a preoccupation of Turnbull’s at this time. The multiple spindly limbs also indicate the trace of the horse’s movement, an idea present in the painting Untitled (1949) (cat no.6) and sculptures such as Torque Upwards (1949) (cat no.4) and Maquette for Large Sculpture (1949) (cat no.5). Turnbull had met and come to admire Alberto Giacometti during his time living in Paris and the Swiss sculptor was a notable early influence. In 1954, Turnbull made another Horse (cat no.53), a bronze which, like his 1946 sculpture, focused solely on the horse's head and curving neck, which balances at two points on the ground. The plaster maquette from which this bronze was cast was, once again, a solid, bulky form, roughly modelled, with texture combed into the surface. The overall form retains some of the qualities of the earlier ‘Cubist’ work, in that we are shown both a flattened frontal view of the horse’s head and simultaneously a side-on view of the mane. This simplified, primitive approach to form can be found in both early African wood carvings and Ancient Greek masks. Pegasus (1954) (cat no.52) continues the feeling of movement from Horse, 1950. Its form is built up in much the same way, with Turnbull constructing a branch-like metal armature but this time ‘filling in’ some of the shapes to arrive at a more solid form ‘thrust into space in several directions, from a long spine.’ 35 Its open, twisting form suggests, without explicitly describing, the dynamic movement of a rearing horse and as such, like Horse (1946), it demands to be viewed in the round. Turnbull created the distinctive ribbed texture by pressing corrugated paper into his still wet plaster model - an effect we see repeated across many other works, see for example Aphrodite (1958) (cat no.24). Tate curator Toby Treves notes that ‘While he determined where to apply the paper, the precise details of the marks were not foreseeable. The immediacy and unpredictability of this method greatly appealed to Turnbull.’ 36

172

Pegasus is the only horse sculpture which makes direct reference to the winged horse of Greek mythology, although this classical allusion is implied in his other works. Richard Morphet has compared its form to Eugène Lequesne‘s spectacular, rearing Pegasus on the roof of the Opéra National de Paris but Turnbull later explained that ‘The idea ‘horse’ emerged from rather than motivated or permitted the sculptural process [and] the desired primacy of object over subject was facilitated by formal compression.’ 37 As an image of dynamic energy and power it is also reminiscent of the famous sculpture Large Horse, 1914, cast 1961, by Raymond Duchamp-Villion (1876–1918) (Coll. Tate Gallery, London). Pegasus is arguably one of Turnbull’s most iconic sculptures, hence its inclusion in numerous important exhibitions, including both of the artist’s retrospectives, at the Tate Gallery in 1973 and the Serpentine Gallery in 1995. After a 33-year gap, Turnbull returned to the subject of the horse in 1987 and all of the twelve works he created thereafter, to varying degrees refer back to Horse (1954). In 1988-9 and 1990, Turnbull produced two very large bronzes, both around 3 metres high and then a final largescale horse in 1999. Amanda Davidson notes the explicit reference to an adze (Stone Age axe) in these later works, alluding to the horse’s role as the tool/servant of man. The large horses have been exhibited outdoors in London and Paris, and, to spectacular effect, in rural locations including the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Chatsworth House, Derbyshire. Large Horse, 1990 was on long term loan to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in Hartford, Connecticut and is now on view at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach. In 1994 and 1995 (cat no.54) there are smaller variations both titled Horse’s Head which show the horse’s head extending over the side of a plinth. In 2000 a similar head is held up off the ground, and in the two final examples from the same year, Horse 2 and 3 (cat no.55), we see the head reduced to its most abstract and linear form. Surrounding these horses in this centenary exhibition will be a number of Turnbull’s paintings from the 1950s. Two of these (cat nos.57-58), created in 1957, show Turnbull’s fascination with creating internal frames within his canvases, as a way of generating focus and intensity through colour contrast. Each canvas follows the same arrangement: a central, rectangular expanse of overlapping marks (applied impasto with a palette knife), is contained within an equally textured, thin border, which is itself enclosed within a very flatly painted outer edge. The work of Mark Rothko was an inspiration in these years and these paintings reflect Turnbull’s transatlantic artistic engagements.

34 William Turnbull in conversation with Colin Renfrew, Waddington Galleries, 1998, William Turnbull Sculpture and Paintings, exh. Cat., London, 1998 35 William Turnbull in conversation with Tate curators published in The Tate Gallery Report 1970–1972, London, 1972 and also the catalogue for the Alastair McAlpine Gift, 1971 36 Toby Treves, Tate Gallery website: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turnbull-horse-t01381. 37 Ibid

Page 169: William Turnbull in his studio Page 170: Turnbull, Large Horse, 1990, Chatsworth House, 2013 Page 173: Turnbull in his studio

LIST OF WORKS

178

|50

|51

|52

|53

|54

(page 179-81) Horse (1946) * bronze 71.1 × 35.6 × 53.3 cm inscribed with signature and date AC from an edition of 4 plus 1 AC

(page 182-83) Horse (1950) * bronze 78.1 × 95.3 × 62.2 cm 6/6 from an edition of 6 plus 1 AC

(page 185) Pegasus (1954) * bronze 88.9 × 44.5 × 74.3 cm stamped with the artist’s monogram, dated and numbered 2/4 from an edition of 4 plus 1 AC (detail page 184)

(page 186-87) Horse (1954) bronze 66.7 × 68 × 23.2 cm AC from an edition of 2 plus 1 AC Private Collection

(page 188-89) Horse's Head (1995) * bronze 147 × 35 × 86 cm stamped with the artist's monogram and stamped ‘Livingstone Art Founders’, dated and numbered 1/6 from an edition of 6, only 4 cast out

|55

|56

|57

|58

(page 190-91) Horse 3 (2000) △ bronze 80 × 111 × 17.8 cm stamped with the artist's monogram, numbered 2/6 from an edition of 6 plus 1 AC, only 1/6 & AC cast out

(page 193) 5-1959 (Yin Yang) (1959) oil on canvas 177.8 × 177.8 cm signed and dated verso; signed and titled on canvas overlap, dated and inscribed ‘Tournament’ and ‘Yin + Yang’ on stretcher bar Milk Collection, Portugal

(page 194) Untitled (1957) * oil on canvas 152.4 × 114.3 cm signed and dated verso

(page 195) Untitled (1957) * oil on canvas 152.4 × 114.3 cm signed and dated verso

|50

Horse (1946) *

179

180

181

|51

Horse (1950) *

182

183

184

|52

Pegasus (1954) *

185

|53

Horse (1954)

186

187

|54

Horse's Head (1995) *

188

189

|55

Horse 3 (2000) *

190

191

|56

5-1959 (Yin Yang) (1959)

192

193

194

|57

Untitled (1957) *

195

|58

Untitled (1957) *

Page 196: William Turnbull, with plaster of Hanging Sculpture (1949) in Paris

Additional cataloguing for available works

Forms on a Base (1949)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, retrospective exhibition, 15 August - 7 October 1973, cat no.5, illus b/w p26 West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 1946-2003, 14 May - 9 October 2005, cat no.9, illus colour p7 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June - 3 July 2010, cat no.4, illus colour p21 Literature Bernard Cohen, 'William Turnbull - Painter and Sculptor', Studio International, vol. 186, number 957, July - August 1973, illus b/w p9 Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.15, illus b/w p82 Claire Lilley, 'William Turnbull at Chatsworth', Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 10 March - 30 June 2013, exhibition catalogue, illus colour fig.7, p24 Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p58

197

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 1946-2003, 14 May - 9 October 2005, cat no.3, illus colour p4 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures and Paintings 1946-1962, 31 January - 24 February 2007, cat no.1, unknown cast, illus colour p5 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June - 3 July 2010, cat no.1, cast no.4/4, illus colour, p15 Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth, 10 March - 30 June 2013, cat no.21, this cast, illus colour p80 Literature Richard Morphet, 'Commentary,' William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, retrospective exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1973, fig.2, illus b/w, p22 Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.5, illus b/w p79 Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p24 |19

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions Derbyshire, Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth, 10 March - 30 June 2013, cat no.9, illus colour p77 |20

Head (1955)

Untitled (1949)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Literature Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p53 |8

Head (1956)

Aquarium (1949)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Literature Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p36 |6

Mask (1946)

Circus (1947)

Provenance Estate of the Artist

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth, 10 March - 30 June 2013, cat no.12, illus colour p78, titled 'Head (Calligraphic)' Literature Theo Crosby (ed.), Uppercase 4, Whitefriars, London, 1960, illus b/w, unpaginated, titled 'Skull' with wrong dimensions Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p145

Additional cataloguing for available works

|23

Standing Female Figure (1955)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions London, Hanover Gallery, Contemporary Sculpture, July - September 1956, cat no.61, illus b/w four views, unpaginated, unknown cast London, Institute of Contemporary Arts, William Turnbull: New Sculpture and Paintings, 25 September - 2 November 1957, cat no.13, unknown cast, illus b/w, unpaginated, collection Eric Estorick, titled 'Standing Female Figure 2' London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, retrospective exhibition, 15 August - 7 October 1973, cat no.26, unknown cast, illus b/w, p34 Cambridge, Jesus College, Sculpture in the Close: An exhibition of the works of William Turnbull, 24 June - 31 July 1990, cat no.5, unknown cast, illus b/w, p24 West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 1946-2003, 14 May - 9 October 2005, cat no.5, cast no.4/4, illus colour, p4 Derbyshire, Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth House, 10 March - 30 June 2013, p9, cat no.68, unknown cast, illus colour, pp66 & 88 London, Barbican, Postwar Modern, New Art in Britain 19451965, 3 March – 26 June 2022, cast no.4/4, illus colour p92 Literature Theo Crosby (ed.), Uppercase 4, Whitefriars, London, 1960, illus b/w four views and a detail, unpaginated Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.58, unknown cast, illus b/w, p95 Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, p109 illus colour, p152 illus b/w, p155 b/w (detail) |27

Totemic Figure (1957)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions (Possibly) San Francisco, Museum of Art, British Art Today, 13 November - 16 December 1962, cat 125, unknown cast, not illus, titled 'Totem Figure', touring to: Dallas, Museum for Contemporary Art, 15 January - 17 February 1963; Santa Barbara, Museum of Art, 7 March - 7 April 1963. London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, retrospective exhibition, 15 August - 7 October

198

1973, cat no.38, illus b/w, p36, another cast London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures 1946-62, 1985-87, 28 October - 21 November 1987, cat no.11, unknown cast, illus colour, p33 Cambridge, Jesus College, Sculpture in the Close: An exhibition of the works of William Turnbull, 24 June - 31 July 1990, unknown cast, cat no.11, illus b/w p2 London, Serpentine Gallery, William Turnbull: Bronze Idols and Untitled Paintings, 15 November 1995 - 7 January 1996, unknown cast, pl. 15, illus b/w p28, in accompanying publication: David Sylvester (intro.), William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, Merrell Holberton in association with Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995 West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 1946-2003, 14 May - 9 October 2005, open air until Spring 2006, p18, cat no.37, illus colour p21, this cast Chatsworth, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth, 10 March - 30 June 2013, cat no.63, this cast, illus colour pp61 & 87 Literature Theo Crosby (ed.), Uppercase 4, Whitefriars, London, 1960, illus b/w, unpaginated, titled 'Idol,' dated '1958' Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.78, illus b/w p102 Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p369 (installation photograph from Chatsworth House) |28

29-1958 (1958)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull, Sculpture and Painting, 15 August - 7 October 1973, cat no.92, not illus p71 London, Barbican Art Gallery, The Sixties Art Scene in London, 11 March - 13 June 1993, insert cat no.243, where titled 'White Painting, 29-1958', in accompanying publication by David Mellor, Phaidon, London, 1993, p77 London, Serpentine Gallery, William Turnbull: Bronze Idols and Untitled Paintings, 15 November 1995 - 7 January 1996, pl16, illus colour p30, in accompanying publication: David Sylvester (intro.), William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, Merrell Holberton in association with Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995 London, Offer Waterman, William Turnbull; New Worlds, Words, Signs, 29 September - 3 November 2017, cat no.18, illus colour pp69 & 25

Additional cataloguing for available works

|30

Paddle Venus 2 (1986)

Provenance Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin Private Collection, Switzerland acquired from the above in 1997 Offer Waterman, London Exhibitions London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures 1946-62, 1985-87, 28 October - 21 November 1987, unknown cast, cat no.24, illus colour, p61 Sculpture at Goodwood, group exhibition, 1996-97, p84 illus colour p85 London, Serpentine Gallery, William Turnbull: Bronze Idols and Untitled Paintings, 15 November 1995 - 7 January 1996, another cast, pl51 illus b/w p71, in accompanying publication: David Sylvester (intro.), William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, Merrell Holberton in association with Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995 West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 1946-2003, 14 May - 9 October 2005, illus colour inside back cover Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth, 10 March - 30 June 2013, cat no.49, unknown cast, illus colour pp47 & 85 Literature Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.244, illus b/w, p169 Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p362 |31

Idol (1988)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull, 25 September - 19 October 1991, cat no.1, illus colour p7 London, Serpentine Gallery, William Turnbull: Bronze Idols and Untitled Paintings, 15 November 1995 - 7 January 1996, unknown cast, pl53 illus b/w p73, in accompanying publication: David Sylvester (intro.), William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, Merrell Holberton in association with Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995 West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 1946-2003, 14 May - 9 October 2005, open air to spring 2006, p18, this cast (AC) illus colour inside front cover

199

Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth, 10 March - 30 June 2013, cat no.51, this cast (AC), illus colour pp49 & 85 Literature Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.259, illus b/w p174 |32

Agamemnon (1962)

Provenance with Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York Private Collection, acquired from the above in November 1966 Private Collection, Europe, by descent from the above Exhibitions New York, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Turnbull, October 1963, cat no.7, illus b/w (studio photograph) and on the invitation card, unpaginated London, Offer Waterman, William Turnbull: New Worlds, Words, Signs, 29 September - 3 November 2017, cat no.10, illus colour p49 New York, Di Donna Gallery, The Life of Forms, 26 October - 14 December 2018, p113, illus colour pp111 & 112 Literature William Turnbull, 'Images without temples' in Living Arts, Theo Crosby & John Bodley (eds.), Vol.1, Institute of Contemporary Arts in association with Tillotsons (Bolton) Ltd, 1963, p17 (detail), illus b/w p26 Richard Morphet, 'Commentary', William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1973, pp39-41; illus b/w, fig.16, p41 Sandy Nairne and Nicholas Serota (eds.), British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1981, illus b/w p168 Patrick Elliott, ‘William Turnbull: A Consistent Way of Thinking’, in William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, David Sylvester (intro.), Merrell Holberton in association with Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995, illus b/w p44 (photograph of Turnbull's studio in Hampstead, 1962) 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 p116 Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, not illus p309

Additional cataloguing for available works

|34

24-1963 (1963)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Private Collection, London Private Collection, Italy Offer Waterman, London Literature Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illusr p287 |39

11-1963 (1963)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Literature Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p285 |41

No.3 (1964)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions Brazil, São Paulo, IX Bienal, British Pavilion, Richard Smith, William Turnbull, Patrick Caulfield, David Hockney, Allen Jones, 22 September - 8 December 1967, British Council, cat no.1, not illus, touring to: Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Museo de Arte Moderna Argentina, Buenos Aires, Museo National de Belles Artes Santiago, Chile, Institute de Artes Plasticas London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull Sculpture 1967-68, 1957-67, 11 March - 4 April 1970, cat no.12, illus b/w unpaginated London, Tate Gallery, The Alistair McAlpine Gift, 30 June - 22 August 1971, cat no.49, unpainted steel version, illus b/w, p115 Bakewell, Derbyshire, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth, 10 March - 30 June 2013, p29, cat no.52, illus colour pp50 & 85 Literature Richard Morphet, 'Commentary', William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, retrospective exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1973, unpainted steel version, fig.22, illus b/w, p50 (installation photograph of group of sculptures) Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.127, illus b/w p123

200

Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus b/w (detail, studio photograph) p212 and illus colour p247 (installation view) |42

15-1965 (1965)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Literature Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p291 |43

Ripple (1966-1972)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull, Sculpture and Painting, 15 August - 7 October 1973, retrospective exhibition, cat no.69, painted version illus b/w, stainless steel version exhibited (and dated 1972) Cambridge, Jesus College, Sculpture in the Close: An Exhibition of the Works of William Turnbull, 24 June - 31 July 1990, cat no.15, illus b/w p28, stainless steel version exhibited West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 1946-2003, 14 May - 9 October 2005, open air until Spring 2006, p14, cat no.26, illus colour p15, stainless steel version exhibited Bakewell, Derbyshire, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth, 10 March - 30 June 2013, p29, cat no.54, illus colour pp52 & 85, stainless steel version exhibited Literature Sculpture in the Open Air, Greater London Council, Battersea Park, exhibition catalogue, 20 May - 30 September 1966, cat no.39, brown painted version illus b/w Five English Sculptors, Caro, Martin, Scott, Tucker, Turnbull, Milan, Galleria Stendhal, exhibition catalogue, 18 February 18 March 1976, brown painted version illus b/w Colour Sculptures: Britain in the Sixties, Waddington Galleries, London, exhibition catalogue, 6 October - 6 November 1999, cat no.17, painted version illus colour p47 Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.183, illus b/w p146; (and the brown painted version of Ripple, 1966, cat no.151, illus b/w p132)

Additional cataloguing for available works

Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, painted version illus colour p236 (work in progress) |44

7-1970 (1970)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 1946-2003, 14 May - 9 October 2005, cat no.17, illus colour p11 Literature Bernard Cohen, 'William Turnbull - Painter and Sculptor', Studio International, vol. 186, number 957, July - August 1973, illus colour, p15 Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p300 |46

17-1970 (1970)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Literature Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p296 |48

1-1972 (1972)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull, Sculpture and Painting, 15 August - 7 October 1973, cat no.128 p69 Literature Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p297 |49

12-1965 (1965)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions London, New Gallery Bennington College, William Turnbull: Paintings, 2 - 17 December 1965, not illus London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting,

201

retrospective exhibition, 15 August - 7 October 1973, cat no.106, illus b/w p60 Literature Gene Baro, 'A Changed Englishman: William Turnbull', Studio International, October 1966, vol. 172, number 882, illus b/w p103 (studio photograph) |50

Horse (1946)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures 1946-62, 1985 87, 28 October - 21 November 1987, cat no.1, unknown cast, illus colour, p13 London, Serpentine Gallery, William Turnbull: Bronze Idols and Untitled Paintings, 15 November 1995 - 7 January 1996, unknown cast, illus colour p11 in accompanying publication: David Sylvester (intro.), William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, Merrell Holberton in association with Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Horses Development of a Theme, Other Sculptures and Paintings, 22 June - 20 July 2001, p48, cat no.1, unknown cast, illus colour, p5 West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 1946-2003, 14 May - 9 October 2005 Literature Richard Morphet, 'Commentary', William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, retrospective exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1973, fig.1, illus b/w, p22 Bernard Cohen, 'William Turnbull- Painter and Sculptor', Studio International, vol. 186, number 957, July - August 1973, illus b/w p9; article later reprinted in the journals Decade, Boston, February 1979, p37, illus b/w and Modern Painters, Winter 1995 Patrick Elliott, 'William Turnbull' Galleries Magazine, November 1995, pl1, illus colour p11 Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.2, illus b/w p12

Additional cataloguing for available works

|51

Horse (1950)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions Venice, XXVI Biennale, The British Pavilion, New Aspects of British Sculpture, 14 June - 19 October 1952, The British Council, cat no.150, AC exhibited London, Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty, 1 February - 1 April 1990, cat no.74, AC, illus b/w, p118, 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, p48, cat no.2, cast no.3/6, illus colour p7 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, p47 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull, 2004, illus colour p9 (dated 1959) Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull: Retrospective 1946 - 2003, 14 May - 9 October 2005 London, Duveen Galleries, Tate Britain, William Turnbull, 14 June - 26 November 2006 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures and Paintings 1946 - 1962, 31 January - 24 February 2007, cat no.2, cast no.1/6 illus colour p7 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June - 3 July 2010, cat no.8, this cast illus colour, p31 London, Offer Waterman, William Turnbull: New Worlds, Words, Signs, 28 September - 3 November 2017, cat no.2, illus colour p33, this cast Literature Richard Morphet, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, retrospective exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1973, fig.7, unknown cast illus b/w, p27 Sandy Nairne and Nicholas Serota (eds.), British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1981, unknown cast illus b/w, p144 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, p18, not illus

202

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 p20 Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p63 |52

Pegasus (1954)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Private Collection, London Offer Waterman, London Exhibitions London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, retrospective exhibition, 15 August - 7 October 1973, cat no.15, AC, illus b/w p28 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures 1946-62, 1985-87, 28 October - 21 November 1987, cat no.3, AC, illus colour p17 Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Scottish Art Since 1900, 17 June - 24 September 1989, cat no.334, cast no.1/4, illus colour pp79 & 167 London, Serpentine Gallery, William Turnbull: Bronze Idols and Untitled Paintings, 15 November 1995 - 7 January 1996, unknown cast, pl6 illus b/w p17, in accompanying publication: David Sylvester (intro.), William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, Merrell Holberton in association with Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Horses Development of a Theme, Other Sculptures and Paintings, 22 June - 20 July 2001, p49, cat no.3, cast no.1/4, illus colour p9 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull Paintings 1959 – 1963, Bronze Sculpture 1954 – 1958, 24 November – 22 December 2004, cat no.14, illus colour unpaginated, cast no.2/4 West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 1946-2003, 14 May - 9 October 2005, AC, not illus p5 London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June - 3 July 2010, cat no.9, AC, illus colour, p33 London, Offer Waterman, William Turnbull, Selected Works from the Artist’s Estate, 17 November 2015 – 15 January 2016 London, Offer Waterman, William Turnbull: New Worlds, Words, Signs, 29 September – 3 November 2017, illus colour p25, cast no.1/4

Additional cataloguing for available works

Literature Richard Morphet (intro.), The Alistair McAlpine Gift, Tate Gallery, London, 1971, p106, not illus Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, pp72 & 88 (cat no.37), illus b/w p29 (fig.13), unknown cast Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, cast no.1/4 illus colour p91 |54

Horse's Head (1995)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, 24 June – 18 July 1998, illus b/w p8, cat no.8, unknown cast, illus colour p31 West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 1946-2003, 14 May - 9 October 2005, p17, cat no.27, another cast in green patina, illus colour p15 Literature Bernard Cohen, 'William Turnbull: Painter and Sculptor', Modern Painters, Winter 1995, pp30-35, illus colour p30, previously published in Art International, July - August 1973 Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.299, illus b/w p189 |57

Untitled (1957)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June - 3 July 2010, cat no.28, illus colour, p81 Literature Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus colour p170 |58

Untitled (1957)

Provenance Estate of the Artist Exhibitions London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June - 3 July 2010, cat no.27, illus colour, p79

203

Public collections holding work by William Turnbull

204

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago

Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Stanford University, Stanford, California

Arts Council Collection, Hayward Gallery, London

Swindon Museum and Art Gallery

The Berardo Collection – Sintra Museum of Modern Art, Lisbon, Portugal

Tate Gallery, London

British Council, London

Tel Aviv Museum of Art: The Riklis Collection of the McCrory Corporation, New York

Contemporary Art Society, London

University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada

David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago

University of Liverpool Art Collections

Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, UCLA, Los Angeles Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery The Government Art Collection (Department for Culture, Media and Sport), London Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Hull University Art Collection, Kingston-upon-Hull Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow Jesus College, Cambridge Leeds Museums and Galleries Leverkusen Museum, Germany McManus Gallery, Dundee Museum and Art Gallery Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California

Picture Credits

205

Front cover, page 2, 39, 65, 66, 135, 173 : © Estate of William Turnbull. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2022. Image courtesy Turnbull Studio. Page 17, 18, 21: © Nigel Henderson Estate Page 43, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 136, 142, 143, 170, 196 : © William Turnbull Estate, Kim Lim Estate, London Page 69: © Estate of William Turnbull. All rights reserved, DACS 201x. Image courtesy Turnbull Studio. Page 105, 169: Private Collection © The Lewinski Archive at Chatsworth. All Rights Reserved 2022/Bridgeman Images. Page 138-39: © Offer Waterman, London Page 141, 208: courtesy of Andrew Caitlin, c198 Back cover: © John Deakin

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First published in 2022 by Offer Waterman, London On the occasion of the exhibition: William Turnbull: Centenary Retrospective Mounted by Offer Waterman at No.9 Cork Street, London, W1S 3LL 29 June – 20 July 2022 Exhibition curated by Emily Drablow and Jon Wood In collaboration with Turnbull Studio Text by Emily Drablow Copy edited by Rebecca Beach Design by Jesse Holborn of Design Holborn Printed by Generation Press Individual artwork photography by Prudence Cuming Associates (cat nos.2, 3, 6-8, 28, 30, 31, 34-36, 39, 40, 42, 50-54) Mark Dalton (cat nos. 1, 4, 5, 9, 10-27, 29, 32, 33, 37, 38, 41, 43-49, 55-57) Installation photography by Lucy Dawkins Unless otherwise stated images are © Turnbull Studio Special thanks to Alex & Johnny Turnbull Jon Wood Stella Vasileiadou Waqas Wajahat Ioli Athansopoulou Selvi May

Page 208: William Turnbull. Photograph by Andrew Caitlin Front cover: Turnbull with No.3 (1964), 1966. Photograph by Kim Lim Back cover: Turnbull outside Fellows Road studio, c1951. Photograph by John Deakin

William Turnbull Centenary Retrospective - Offer Waterman 2022

Articles inside

HORSE, POWER & PRESENCE

DRAWING IN SPACE

IDOLS & THE EXPRESSIVE IMAGE

HEADS & MASKS

ANCESTRAL LANDS

COLOUR & STEEL