Butler was a man with two distinct, yet highly accomplished careers. As Cotterell Butler he was an architect with a burgeoning practice, while as Reg he was an essentially untrained avant-garde sculptor, having only worked briefly as an assistant in Henry Moore’s studio in 1947; he tried his hand as a blacksmith during the war, whose idiosyncratic style and experimental approach drew the attention of contemporary artists and critics alike. While exhibiting at both the 1952 and 1954 Venice Biennales he made a significant contribution to Herbert Read’s defining concept of post-war art, the so-called ‘Geometry of Fear’, and was also talent spotted by international gallerists such as Curt Valentin in New York and later Pierre Matisse.

Figure in Space is one of Butler’s finest explorations into the human figure. His architectural background provided him with a sensitive understanding of the relationship between form and space, an understanding which he applied to strong effect through the creation of cage-like structures, such as that visible here, which are very similar to those used by Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon in their work. In this instance the structures surrounding the atrophied human figure provide the sculpture with an extraordinary sense of movement while also referencing the spring which surround bronzes in the initial stages of the casting process. By drawing our attention to the making process itself Butler draws our attention to the artificiality of the human figure and encourages a detached, Existentialist, standpoint. Butler explained this to Pierre Matisse: ‘to me the so-called base…is a very important part of the total sculpture – it isn’t merely a base but I’m sure does things to the meaning of the whole thing’ (letter to Pierre Matisse, November 1966, quoted in Pierre Matisse and His Artists (exh. cat)., The Pierpoint Morgan Library, New York, 2002, p.128).

Pierre Matisse was quick to sign Reg Butler into his stable of artists after the Curt Valentin Gallery closed in 1955, although Matisse struggled to develop a close working relationship with Erica Brausen who represented Butler in London. In March 1956 he included Butler in an exhibition alongside prestigious and established names such as Le Corbusier, Giacometti, Marino Marini and Joan Miro (among others), but it was not until February 1959 that he was able to stage a solo exhibition. It was not only Butler’s idiosyncratic approach to form which fascinated Matisse and ensured him a place in his prestigious gallery but also the sensuality of his figures which sat very well alongside those of Balthus and Maillol, who were regular features at the gallery.

Private Collection, New York, by
1959

Private Collection, 2003

Grosvenor Gallery, London, 2004

Private Collection, UK

Osborne Samuel, London

Colin Ralph, The Colin Collection: Paintings,
Watercolours, Drawings and Sculpture collected by Mr. & Mrs. Ralph F. Colin,
New York, 1960

Margaret Garlake, New Art, New World: British Art in Post-War Society,
Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1998

Margaret Garlake, The Sculpture of Reg Butler, The Henry Moore
Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, 2006, cat. no. 176, ill. fig 35,
p. 43 (another cast illustrated)

London, Hanover Gallery, May – June 1957, cat. no. 34

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, February 1959, cat. no. 14

Louisville, J. B. Speed Art Museum, Reg Butler, A Retrospective
Exhibition, October – December 1963, cat. no. 67