Lynn Chadwick’s Spiky Modernism Heads to Houghton Hall as Christie’s Preps a £1m–£1.5m Sale Highlight
A sweep of welded iron figures and kinetic constructions by British sculptor Lynn Chadwick (British, 1914–2003) will take over Houghton Hall this March, as the artist’s market presence also sharpens in London: Christie’s is set to offer his 1988 sculpture “Back to Venice” as a leading lot in its Modern British and Irish Art evening sale on March 18.
At Houghton Hall in Norfolk, the exhibition will unfold across both the house and its grounds, bringing together 30 works made between the 1950s and the 1990s. The selection includes kinetic sculptures and several of Chadwick’s most recognizable, tautly engineered forms, among them “Beast VII” (1956) and “Back to Venice (Male)” (1988). Visitors will also encounter examples of the paired figures Chadwick called his “couples,” including “Jubilee IV” (1985).
The show is organized and supported by Pangolin, the London gallery long associated with sculpture. Every work on view comes from Chadwick’s estate, including three pieces that have spent the past eight years on loan to the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich.
Chadwick’s estate is based in Gloucestershire, where the artist lived and worked for more than half a century. Alongside original works, it maintains substantial archival holdings that trace a career shaped by postwar materials and a distinctly architectural sense of structure.
That architectural training was literal. Chadwick began as an architectural draughtsman and, after serving in the Second World War, designed trade fair stands. While working in that commercial sphere, he started experimenting with mobiles, developing an early interest in movement and balance that would remain central to his sculpture. His first solo exhibition came in 1950 at Gimpel Fils in London.
International recognition followed quickly. In 1956, Chadwick represented Britain at the Venice Biennale alongside the painter Ivon Hitchens. There he presented angular, anthropomorphic sculptures built from welded iron-rod armatures, filled with the industrial compound Stolit — a process that helped define the hard-edged, tensile surfaces of his mature work.
In 1958, Chadwick bought Lypiatt Park, a country estate in Gloucestershire that he restored over decades, establishing the rural base from which he produced much of his later output. He died in April 2003, only months before a retrospective of his work opened at Tate Britain.
Today, Chadwick’s sculptures remain embedded in major collections, including Tate Britain, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. In London, his “King and Queen” (1990) is installed above the entrance to Fortnum & Mason.
The Christie’s lot, “Back to Venice” (1988), carries an estimate of £1 million to £1.5 million. It comes from the collection of the late cancer specialist Robert A. Holton and was made for the 1988 Venice Biennale after the British Council invited Chadwick to return and create a large sculpture for the garden of the British Pavilion. It was shown outdoors alongside works by Anthony Caro, Phillip King, and Joe Tilson — a context that underscored Chadwick’s place within a generation that redefined British sculpture in the second half of the 20th century.
With a major estate-backed presentation at Houghton and a high-profile evening-sale appearance at Christie’s, March offers a concentrated look at how Chadwick’s legacy is being staged today — in the landscape of an English country house and under the bright lights of the London auction rostrum.
