We are privileged to be able to offer to you new limited editions of figurative sculptures by the renowned and respected artist, John Robinson.
John Robinson, sculptor 1935 - 2007
John Robinson was born in London in 1935. At the age of 17 he joined the Merchant Navy, and on reaching Australia he jumped ship to explore this vast continent. From jackerooing and cattle droving, he went on to buy a block of virgin scrub land in the 1950’s in the Ninety Mile Desert of South Australia where he and his wife, Margie, developed a sheep farm.
In the 1960’s, at the age of 35, Robinson returned to England with his family to begin a career as a sculptor, a hobby he had developed in the shearing shed towards the end of his farming career. His figurative bronzes range from the ‘monumental’ athletic sculptures to the exquisite and playful life-size children sculptures. Working from his studio in Devon, and then later in Somerset, Robinson created ‘The Acrobats’, a 5 metre (16 feet) tall bronze cast of which is on permanent display outside the Sports Academy in Canberra, Australia.
The Academy also have on permanent display the heroic-sized ‘Soccer Players’ and ‘Pole Vaulter’. In 1986 the heroic-sized ‘Hammer Thrower’ was commissioned for the United States Sports Academy in Alabama, USA, and a limited edition gold-plated maquette of this sculpture is now awarded annually for fields of excellence and achievement. In 1988 Robinson was nominated the official Sculptor for the British Olympic Committee. In 1992 his sculpture ‘The Gymnast’ was selected for the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Robinson’s figurative sculptures of children, based on commissions, have appeared in galleries, private and public collections around the world, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1982. He has carried out commissioned portraits of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, H.M. the Queen Mother, and President Reagan.
It was in the 1970s that Robinson developed his work to encompass symbolism. These abstract sculptures, termed ‘The Universe Series of Symbolic Sculpture’, trace a path from the beginning of time to the present day. The whole collection, comprising over one hundred works in bronze, wood, stainless steel, marble and tapestry, symbolically portrays elements of life, as visual interpretations of the artist's feelings, with each sculpture inspired by and created in an organic form found in nature, such as the spiral, ovoid, circle and cone.
The ‘Universe Series’ has been exhibited around the world, and permanent collections reside in Hampshire, England, and Aspen, USA.
You can see more of John Robinson's contemporary sculpture at the John Robinson memorial website.
