IVOR ROBERTS-JONES (1913- 1996)

4 December 1999 - 23 January 2000
Wolsey Art Gallery

This exhibition included photographs and maquettes for commissioned works, portrait heads and drawings from the Suffolk studio of Ivor Roberts-Jones.

The figurative sculptor suffered almost total critical neglect in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s, but Ivor Roberts-Jones' breakthrough was achieved in 1971 when he was selected to execute the over-life-size bronze figure of Sir Winston Churchill for Parliament Square, London. Unveiled in 1973, this massive brooding figure of him as war leader swathed in his military great-coat has a marvellous presence and power, and led to further commissions for monumental figures of Churchill for Oslo (1975) and New Orleans (1977) and a second cast of the London figure for Prague (1999). Ivor Roberts-Jones' portrait sculptures clearly reveal him as the most outstanding British-born portrait sculptor of the second half of the 20th Century, and from 1978 he executed a brilliant series of portrait heads of eminent Welsh sitters for the Welsh National Portrait Collection. The plaster casts of most of his finest work were gathered together in Ipswich for this exhibition.

Ivor Roberts-Jones studied in the 1930s at Goldsmith’s College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. He fought in Burma during the Second World War, coming back to London in 1946 to teach art and pursue his career as a figurative sculptor. He moved to Suffolk in 1970.

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