Elisabeth Frink

Elisabeth Frink (1930-1993) was a phenomenon - an outstanding figure of British twentieth-century art and one of the few women to break into the art establishment. Aged twenty-one and still a student at Chelsea Art School, she sold her first work, a bird, to the Tate Gallery. National recognition soon followed.Born into an ordinary Army family, Frink's early, impressionable life was broken up by her father's travels around the country. With the Second World War she had her first experience of the violence which was constantly to influence her work.She evolved into an original, passionate and exceptional sculptor, fulfilling a wide variety of both private and public commissions. Above all, Frink was a figurative artist: seduced by the physical rather than spiritual aspects of sculpture. Her material - the disintegrating world around her and her passion for Man - was untouched by any contemporary movements or passing fashions: she possessed an inner strength and an unshakeable integrity in her art.