Leon Underwood was a notable figure in Modern British Art, known for his influential sculpture and teaching. His diverse works are held in Tate Britain, the V&A, and the Ashmolean. Trained as a painter, he turned to sculpture after WWI, focusing on carved female torsos in the 1920s.
Leon Underwood was a significant figure in twentieth-century British sculpture, and a teacher who influenced generations of artists.
His works can be seen in the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Britain, and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. While his reputation was eclipsed by those of his students Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, Underwood can now be appreciated as a brilliant and versatile artist in a wide variety of media.
Underwood trained as a painter at the Royal College of Art before the First World War, and at the Slade School of Art after demobilisation. It was only after the War that he started to work on sculpture. The human torso was a favourite subject in the early years of his sculptural practice: he carved female torsos in Tournai slate (1923), Mansfield sandstone (1923-24), Roman marble (c. 1925-30) and Ancaster stone (c. 1925-32).
