Lot 256
Robert Adams (British 1917-1984) §
Polarity, 1968
Auction: 29 October 2021 from 11:00 BST
Description
painted steel
Dimensions
246cm high, 101cm wide, 40.5cm deep (96.8in high, 39.75in wide, 15.9in deep)
Provenance
Provenance:
Gimpel Fils, London;
The Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Collection, Dallas Collection, Texas, USA;
Sotheby's, New York, 9 May 2008, lot 3.
Exhibited:
Robert Adams: Recent Scupture, Gimpel Fils, London, 1968.
Literature:
Alastair Grieve, The Sculpture of Robert Adams, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, London, 1992, cat. no.542, illustrated p.224.
Footnote
The present work is unique.
Polarity (1968) was exhibited at Robert Adams's one-man show at Gimpel Fils in 1968. The works shown were sculptures in steel and several were on a large scale. This was a milestone in his practice, before turning to smaller scale bronze and marble works, perhaps a reflection on the new wave of British sculptors of the ‘New Generation’, including Philip King and Sir Anthony Caro, that had shown at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1965.
Formed of rectangular plates, bent through 90 degrees and painted with a smooth glossy black paint, Polarity and the other contemporary sculptures display a higher level of three-dimensionality and controlled movement than Adams had produced in a decade. He commented soon after the Gimpel Fils exhibition that ‘My show in September was a turning point. Things as you pointed out were three-dimensional. Polarity, attempting to get away from flat sheets and create volume.’ (Quoted in Alastair Grieve & Robert Adams, The Sculpture of Robert Adams (British Sculptors and Sculpture Vol.3), Ben Uri Gallery & Museum, London, 1992, p.115)
There was a incredible confidence to Adams’s large works in his 1968 exhibition, and Polarity can be considered one of his major sculptures of the period, selling to the influential collectors Patsy and Raymond Nasher of Dallas, Texas.
