Gaudier's great!

I was routing through my bookcase and what should loom large: Henri. I talk of him in personal terms because I have known of his work for many, many years. In fact I have owned a number of his drawings; sadly none of his sculptures. I have championed his cause before, but I think it is time to buff it up again. If any of you are near to Cambridge here in the UK, go to Kettles Yard; they have the best collection of his work in the world. That's all because the person who started Kettles Yard, Jim Ede, had more of his work than anyone else. I have found a potted biog of Henri which will give you a taster but do try and go deeper, there are few books on him, but the one mentioned is a good start and he crops up in other books about the normal literary coterie (Pound, et al). Better still, if anyone reading this knows more please share it with me, I'm always keen to know more of Henri.

Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri (1891–1915). French sculptor and draughtsman, active in England for most of his very short career and usually considered part of the history of British rather than French art. He was born at St Jean-de-Braye, near Orleans, the son of a carpenter, and was destined for a career in commerce. In 1910 he took up sculpture in Paris without formal training, and in the same year he met Sophie Brzeska, a Polish woman 20 years his senior, with whom he lived from that time, both of them adopting the hyphenated name. In 1911 they moved to London, which Gaudier had visited briefly in 1906 and 1908, and lived for a while in extreme poverty. He became a friend of Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, and other leading literary and artistic figures, and his work was shown in avant-garde exhibitions, such as the Vorticist exhibition of 1915. In 1914 he enlisted in the French army and he was killed in action the following year, aged 23.

Gaudier developed with astonishing rapidity from a modeling style based on Rodin to a highly personal manner of carving in which shapes are radically simplified in a way recalling the work of Brancusi (Red Stone Dancer, Tate Gallery, London, c. 1913). In Britain, only Epstein was producing sculpture as stylistically advanced at this time. Gaudier's work was appreciated by only a small circle during his lifetime, but since his death he has become recognized as one of the outstanding sculptors of his generation and has acquired something of a legendary status as an unfulfilled genius. Sophie Breszka's devotion to his memory bore fruit in a memorial exhibition of his work at the Leicester Galleries, London, in 1918, and biographies of him were written by H. S. Ede (1930) and Horace Brodzky (1933). Ede's biography was originally entitled A Life of Gaudier-Breszka, but when it was reprinted in 1931 it was retitled Savage Messiah in allusion to the demonic intensity and energy of his life; this was also the title of Ken Russell's film on the artist (1972).

Off to the States soon to see our son and daughter-in-law; can't wait. They always spoil us and the people in their part of the world are so friendly and helpful you just want to move in with them. Plus we can catch-up with art States side. The picture above will whet your appetite in that direction. Furthermore Kathy has offered to sprinkle star dust on my blog, from the blog Queen herself! Exciting stuff to come, hang on in there.