Robert Adams (1917-1984) was one of the leading lights of the British avant-garde in the post war period. He name is synonymous with the group of artists (also including Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, Geoffrey Clarke, Bernard Meadows, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull) who made up the so called ‘Geometry of Fear’ movement, who exhibited in the ‘New Aspects of British Sculpture’ in the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 1952.

Adams started his career as a carver of stone and wood, in the tradition of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. His interests however soon developed, becoming increasingly abstract. Adams held his first one man show at the Gimpel Fils Gallery in London, in 1947; during this period, he was also a teacher at the Slade School of Art, where he met like mind artists working in constructed abstract art – including Victor Pasmore, and Kenneth and Mary Martin. The next year, in 1948 this transformation to abstraction was further developed when Adams visited Paris, and was exposed to the sculpture of Pablo Picasso, Julio Gonzales, Constantine Brancusi, and Henry Laurens.

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