Pair of Sitting Figures IV

By the 1970s, Chadwick's `increasing tendency to interpret his work in terms of human relationship, rather than formal balance, begins to be audible. `Presences' was how he refereed to his new figure sculptures; they were about being, not doing: I used to call them `Watchers', but no longer. Sometimes they are not watching anything. What they are doing is illustrating a relationship - a physical relationship - between people'. It was through this relationship, not through purely formal or allusive qualities, that he wanted his sculptures to speak: `If you can get their physical attitudes right you can spell out a message'.

What was the message? Chadwick figure sculptures of the early and mid-1970s consist largely of male and female couples - standing, sitting, walking or even lying together on a base striped to resemble a beach recliner. The male forms tend to be angular, the female ones modelled in the manner of the Elektras made from steel and Stolit but recalling the hand-formed surfaces of ancient terracottas from Tanagra. The mood is comparably tender and intimate, modulated by fine tunings of attitude - the tilt of torso, shoulders and heads. Trios of Watchers - or Presences - returned, small-scale and utterly without the brute frontality of their monumental avatars. A preoccupation with physical relationship had, in its way, defined a popular awareness of the Britishness of British sculpture in the mid-twentieth century' (M. Bird, Lynn Chadwick, Farnham, 2014, p. 147).