Study for Head of Watcher No. 1 (The Unknown Political Prisoner monument) (1951-52)

Reg Butler

graphite, crayon and watercolour on paper

Tate, London, Liverpool and St Ives

Classification:

Drawing and Watercolour

Materials:

Watercolour, Graphite, Crayon, Paper

Dimensions:

26.7 x 19.7 (support) cm

Accession Number:

A01062

Credit:

Presented by the Contemporary Art Society, 1956

Scheme:

Historic Purchase by Purchaser (1914-2008)

Ownership history:

Purchased from the artist by Peter Gregory (1888-1959) for the Contemporary Art Society, 1954; presented to the Tate Gallery, 1956

Relationship:

Eric Craven 'E. C.' 'Peter' Gregory Tate, London, Liverpool and St Ives

Subject:

Study, Head

One of three drawings that were made as preliminary sketches for Reg Butler's Grand prize-winning monument for The Unknown Political Prisoner (1953). In Butler’s design the drawings represent the heads of three women, described by the artist as ‘watchers’ … 'in whose minds the unknown prisoner is remembered’ who would stand at a stone base of what was to be an empty tower made of wired bronze spindly legs.

The Institute for Contemporary Arts, London had organised an international competition in 1952 for sculptors to commemorate those who had been imprisoned or lost their lives in the cause of freedom. Butler also made a few maquettes, although the original model was destroyed by a Hungarian refugee while on display at the Tate Gallery in 1953; another larger working model was made for the Academy of Fine Art, Berlin, where it was hoped the project would be realised at a site, the Humbolt Höhe, Wedding. overlooking the Soviet Zone, in West Berlin. 3,500 artists from 57 countries submitted entries for the competition, yet none were ever constructed.

Butler, who originally trained as an architect and was a conscientious objector and blacksmith during WW2, was one of post-war sculptors (also including Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, Lynn Chadwick, Geoffrey Clarke, Bernard Meadows, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull) who exhibited in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1952. The art critic Herbert Read had coined the phrase the ‘geometry of fear’ when collectively describing the spiky forms of the sculptures’ iconography of despair.

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