Lynn Chadwick

Lynn Russell Chadwick was born in Barnes, London in 1914. His father was an engineer, and his mother had a keen interest in the arts. The family would frequently visit the Tate Gallery to study the Turners there. Chadwick was drawn to clay modelling and expressed an interest in becoming an artist while at school. His art master encouraged him and focussed his teaching on technique, particularly in oil and watercolour painting. Chadwick’s family supported his artistic ambitions, but fearing a career in the arts was too precarious, they encouraged him to train as an architect. Chadwick followed this advice and became a trainee draughtsman for the architect Donald Hamilton, then Eugen Carl Kauffman, and finally for Rodney Thomas.

In 1941, Chadwick volunteered to serve in the Fleet Air Arm, and he served as a pilot during the Second World War, escorting Atlantic conveys. In 1944, after he was demobilised, he returned to Rodney Thomas’s architectural firm and began designing trade fair stands. Chadwick started making suspended objects in a state of balance, out of balsa wood and wire. These mobiles were initially made as adornments for exhibition stands but they soon attracted the attention of art dealers Charles and Peter Gimpel of Gimpel Fils, who gave him a solo exhibition in 1950. This led to commissions which required him to learn how to weld and cemented his career as a sculptor.

In 1958 Chadwick bought a manor house outside Stroud named Lypiatt Park, which he restored and lived in for the rest of his life. During the 1960s Chadwick continued to receive high-profile commissions and was awarded a CBE in 1964. In 1965 he married Éva Reiner who became his constant companion, as well as a chronicler and cataloguer of his work. In 1971 Chadwick established a foundry at Lypiatt Park and began to install his own bronze works in the gardens of his home, forming the beginnings of his own sculpture park.

As a leading Modern British artist Lynn Chadwick’s work can be seen in the collections of major museums throughout the world, including the Tate Gallery, London; National Museum of Wales; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne, Paris; Peggy Guggenheim Collection (The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation), Venice; Galleria Nazionale d-Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC.