Dame Elisabeth Frink

Goggle Head

1969

Not on display

Artist: Dame Elisabeth Frink 1930–1993
Medium: Bronze
Dimensions: Object: 600 x 565 x 445 mm, 40 kg
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1998
Reference: T07396

Display caption

Man, either as victim or aggressor, was a dominant theme throughout the career of British sculptor Elisabeth Frink. In the late 1960s she embarked on a series of male busts in which the eyes are concealed by sinister, polished goggles. The obscured identity of the person behind the goggles creates a sense of menace and aggression, presenting an archetype of man rather than an image of an individual. Frink considered these busts to be her first explicit comments on the world’s inhumanity, and said later that ‘they became a symbol of evil for me’.

Elisabeth Frink was born in Thurlow, Suffolk in 1930 and died in Blandford Forum, Dorset in 1993.

Gallery label, August 2004

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