This, it should be said straightaway, is an important exhibition, and it should not be ignored by the public. The names in the catalogue speak for themselves: Elizabeth Frink, Barbara Hepworth (no less), Lynn Chadwick, Henry Moore . . . The Irish sculptors include F.E. McWilliam, Conor Fallon and Alexandra Wejchert. The last-named, of course, is Polish, but her best work was done in this country and in the face of powerful competition, her sculptures (in brass, steel, perspex, bronze) stand out effortlessly. This is "international" abstraction in the true (and much-abused) sense. She was, without much question, a major sculptor, and a large-scale retrospective is now essential to view her in full.
Elizabeth Frink is a puzzling artist - a genius at her best, at others merely a good journeywoman, and in between these extremes, a curiously uneven eclectic who seems in search of a style. A major retrospective, again, might sort this out. Lynn Chadwick seems hemmed in by his time, and the same is true of Kenneth Armitage. The single work by Barbara Hepworth shows that she belonged in a different league; she has a formal rigour and a clear intellectual concept of what she wanted to do. The various bronzes by F.E. McWilliam, some of them familiar by now, emphasise his invention, his sheer quality, and his curious ability to make a fragment of an anatomy (usually female) speak for the whole. Conor Fallon's works in bronze and steel have the same stamp of style - technique answering imagination, or even prompting it and enhancing it. The Henry Moore works consist of two small bronzes and a piece in silver. This is, I think, his centenary year and some reconsideration is due; but in the context of this exhibition, that is a side issue.
What matters primarily is the fact that the Solomon Gallery has brought together representative works by a number of major sculptors, some of them quite out of fashion, and for this it deserves full commendation.
Until May 13th.