Robert Adams 1917-1984

Unique

This is the maquette for Two Circular Forms No. 2 , exhibited at the XXXI Biennale in Venice, 1962 when Adams represented Britain, now in the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d’ Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome.

It was Reg Butler, not Robert Adams, who suggested that ‘there is no such thing as abstract art …. The question of abstraction was one of degree. , , [Sculptors wished] to resolve their problems in a visual form, and this could not be called abstract art’ at a discussion at the I.C.A’s showing of ‘London – Paris: new trends in painting and sculpture’ in 1950. , It characterised the tone of a continuing debate in early post-war years around the validity and relevance of definitions, and artists’ desire to escape from dogmatic pigeon-holing in order to pursue their own explorations and creations, beyond critical judgments about belonging or not belonging to current movements and styles.

After art college training with interruptions, Adams had done his war service as an engineer, teaching himself to carve wood at the end of the war. , His first sculptures in wood, plaster and eventually also stone bore some resemblance to the anthropomorphic vertical forms of Moore, veering between hollowed out rounded, meshed forms and assemblies of stacked irregularly shaped blocks, demonstrating an a mastery of matters of weight and balance in his forms, inspite of the deliberate asymmetry of his figures. , In the spirit of Moore’s ‘truth to material’ credo, Adams’ showed particular sensitivity to the grain and structure of wood, just as he would in the way he exploited the natural properties of the metal forms he used in later works.

An interest in architecture and collaborating with architects would influence his direction towards ‘construction’, and in that sense, by 1952 he stood out in Read’s selection of sculptors for that Venice Biennale as the closest to ‘geometry’ but the furthest from ‘fear’. , For the ensuing five years, beginning with the series of exhibitions at the painter Adrian Heath’s flat at 22 Fitzroy Street in London in 1952, Adams would exhibit with the Constructivists in a group around Victor Pasmore, Mary and Kenneth Martin, and Anthony Hill, but his work remained closer to the lyrical abstraction of Heath’s painting rather than the strict geometric discipline being developed by the others. , Adams’ ‘Vertical Construction’ of 1951 still had superficial similarities with Butler’s contemporary work – its verticality of course, but also transparency and the appearance of drawing in space – but already the irregular stacking of shaped planes anticipated Adams’ spare, measured use of flat or curved linear forms.

While continuing to work in wood and stone in the early 1950’s he also learnt to weld, and began to exploit iron in its basic form of rods and sheets in order to assemble architecturally frontal sculptures. , These would work as screens of reliefs rather than free-standing sculptures in the round. , With one of his largest works to date, a free-standing relief called ‘Monolithic Form’ which foreshadows several works in the 1960’s such as ‘Vertical Screen Form’ and indeed ‘Opus 145’, Adams explained: ‘Monolithic Form is an attempt to create outdoor sculpture using simple abstract forms in relationship, the forms themselves creating the ‘life’ by their opposition to each other, as well as giving directions to certain thrusts and movements within the main form. , These heavy angular forms were intended to contrast with and oppose the landscape rather than become one with it’.

Of the 1952 Venice sculptors, only Paolozzi and Adams would participate in the now famous exhibition ‘This is Tomorrow’ at the I.C.A. in 1956. , Adams collaborated with Frank Newby, Peter Carter and the architect Colin St John Wilson on a convex entrance ‘tunnel’ incorporating geometric elements in relief to form a sculptured three-dimensional, architectural environment. , In 1957 Adams explained that as a consequence of this collaboration, ‘during the past year, forms in my work have changed from rectangular to curvilinear, solid mass and weight has given way to light linear forms and curved planes, and a fresh element – counterbalance – has appeared’.

This counterbalancing is seen in its fullest realization in the commission for a giant concrete relief screen , to run the length of the new theatre in Gelsenkirchen in Germany, completed in 1969.  ,In it Adams’ angled projecting and receding elements create a measured rhythm of light and shadow, and of movement and stasis on a truly monumental scale.

Phillip Wright

Gimpel Fils, London
Private Collection, UK, purchased from the above, 2006.
Osborne Samuel, London

Grieve, Alastair, The Sculpture of Robert Adams , published by The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, 1992, no. 379 (Opus 145), illus.  p.203