£1,750
Contemporary & Post-War Art | 595
Auction: 16 April 2020 at 12:00 BST
Signed, handwritten note affixed to base with date and explanation of design, bronze sculpture with gold patina
Note: The artist's note, affixed to the base, reads:
Alice and the Red Queen. This composition illustrates an incident in 'Alice Through the Looking Glass.' The Red Queen takes Alice's hand and they begin to run. Alice is running very fast indeed, in fact she is flying thro' the air. Alice asks the Queen "Why is it that although we run so fast, yet the tree beside which we were standing when we began to run is still with us?" Answers the Queen "Here, my dear, if you want to get somewhere else you have to run twice as fast." This is the original design which I carried out on a large scale for a school. As a further explanation the Red Queen is the Queen in the game of chess. Benno Scotz Feb. 1975.
Biography:
Benno Schotz emigrated to Glasgow from Estonia in 1912, and gained an engineering diploma from the Royal Technical College. From 1914-1923 he worked in the drawing office of John Brown and Company, a Clydebank shipbuilders, while attending evening classes in sculpture at the Glasgow School of Art.
Schotz became a full time sculptor in 1923 and rose to became a full member of the Royal Scottish Academy, head of sculpture at the Glasgow School of Art (a post he held from 1938 until his retirement in 1961), and eventually Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland in 1963.