Leslie Thornton
Sculptor who was known for his ‘playful and threatening’ spiky welded bronze figures
LESLIE THORNTON, who has died aged 90, was a sculptor linked to the celebrated Geometry of Fear group which redefined the medium in post-war Britain. Thornton, a former Bevin Boy from Yorkshire, is best known for his unique welded works in bronze from the 1950s which feature spiky abstract figures often incarcerated in cages. Thornton said that his figures were enclosed within structures, “to reflect the human predicament. Both playful and threatening”.
His subjects were often benign – men fishing, children sliding, trapeze artists in mid-swing – yet they appeared constrained by malignant forces. His approach was of a piece with Cold War anxieties, memories of the Holocaust and the emerging existential visions of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. His works were favourably reviewed – “ingenious and
entertaining,” said The Lady.
In 1955 Thornton joined Eduardo Paolozzi, Kenneth Armitage and Elizabeth Frink – described by the art critic Sir Herbert Read as the Geometry of Fear set – for the British
Council’s touring exhibition Young British Sculptors. The same year he
showed at the New Sculptors and
Painters Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.
But although Thornton was in tune with his fellow sculptors, he was never part of any formal movement. While his works blended abstract and figurative elements it was perhaps their unsettling atmosphere that was most striking. “The spaces between and around objects and settings,” Thornton explained, “are almost as rich as the objects themselves.”
Leslie Thornton was born on May 26 1925 in Skipton, North Yorkshire, out of wedlock to Evelyn Thornton, a cotton twister at the nearby Dewhurst Mill. He was brought up by his grandmother Eliza Thornton and never knew his father.
Leslie attended Brougham Street School in Skipton and, aged 14, went as apprentice to GH Mason, a painting and decorating firm. The job required part time study at Keighley Art School to develop skills such as glazing and stencilling. At Keighley, he won a county art scholarship to study at Leeds College of Art. In 1943 he was conscripted to work in the mines as a Bevin Boy to aid the war effort. It was, he observed, “a tough job down pit, it played havoc with my hands.”
At the war’s end he took up his place at Leeds (1945-48) before training at the sculpture school at the Royal College of Art (1948-51). “My knowledge of sculpture was exhilarated by visits to the British Museum and actually handling very early Cycladic terracotta figures, simple and direct,” Thornton noted, adding that he “became interested in European contemporary work in sculpture and painting, in addition to the emerging English metal sculpture.”
He set up a studio in a disused stable in Tooting and began welding his latticework sculptures with a lightweight Saffire Blowpipe. These were, he explained, “linear drawings” in metal. In 1956 he was included in the landmark This is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. The show brought together painters, sculptors, designers and architects in a communal appraisal of modern life and placed Thornton in the company of Richard Hamilton, Erno Goldfinger and Victor Pasmore. He had his first one-man show the following year at Gimpel Fils Gallery in London.
During the 1960s his works appeared in group exhibitions across Europe and America. Public commissions, both in Britain and America, followed. He produced works for the Daily Mirror Building in London, a crucifix for St Ignatius’ College, Enfield, and two crucifixes for the St Louis Priory in Missouri.
Through the 1970s and 1980s he exhibited at the Royal Academy. With a family to support, however, he turned more towards teaching.
He was a visiting lecturer at Bromley, Hammersmith and Central Schools of Art (1951-65), senior lecturer at Sunderland Polytechnic (1965-70) and principal lecturer and the head of the sculpture department at the North Staffordshire Polytechnic (1970-89).
Later in his career he created aluminium and stainless steel sculptures called “Argosies” that explored “volume and mass using geometry and colour”.
He became an associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1951 and was a panel member of the Council for National Academic Awards (1978-81). He was included in the Arts Council
Geometry of Fear show (2007-09) and his works sit in many major collections including those of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. His piece Gladiators (1956) is in the Leeds City Art Gallery. Roundabout from 1955 is presently on view at the Guggenheim Collection, Venice.
As his key sculptures from the 1950s and 1960s were unique, rather than cast in a series, they are now exceptionally rare.
In 1950 Thornton married Constance Billows, whom he had met at a cricket club dance at Skipton Town Hall. In retirement the couple returned to Yorkshire where Thornton took up painting and drawing. His wife died in 2013.
He is survived by their son and daughter. Leslie Thornton, born May 26 1925, died February 9 2016