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Please note the house will be temporarily closed for 4 weeks from 14 March 2024

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Open: Tuesday–Sunday, 11am–5pm

We are closed on Bank Holiday Mondays

Please note the house will be temporarily closed for 4 weeks from 14 March 2024

Photo: © Kettle's Yard

Sculpture

Birds Erect, 1914 (posthumous cast, undated)

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Stone cast
670 x 300 x 260 mm
[HGB 102]
On display

About the artist

Born 1891 – Died 1915

Henri Gaudier was born in St. Jean de Braye, near Orleans, in France. He first came to Britain in 1908.

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This is Gaudier-Brzeska’s last large-scale sculpture, completed just before he left England to join the French army. It is also his most abstract work; without the aid of the title, it would be difficult to recognise the subject. Gaudier was influenced by contemporary Cubist sculptors, in particular Archipenko and Lipchitz. Unlike painting, which aimed at condensing different perspectives into a single image, Cubist sculpture was concerned primarily with abstracted and boldly geometrical forms.

Despite the solidity and weight of Birds Erect, there is a strong sense of upward movement, suggested by the long rectangular shapes which create a vertical pull. Jim described it as having ‘the vertiginous feeling of birds nested on a cliff’s edge’.