By the time Elisabeth Frink (1930-93) came to make prints in the Curwen Studio, she was already a celebrated sculptor of the younger post-war generation. The studio’s director, master lithographer Stanley Jones (1933-2023) had a special affinity with sculptors: Hepworth, Moore and others that followed all produced much of their greatest graphic work at Curwen.
Portrait: Jorge Lewinski © The Lewinski Archive at Chatsworth
Elisabeth Frink, the Odyssey Suite, 1974, lithographs, signed
Like her sculpture, Frink’s work with Jones stands out for its individuality: a powerful love letter to the heroic forms of humans and animals, made at a time when British art was more concerned with Pop and American abstraction. In this extract from Caroline Wiseman’s catalogue raisonné of Frink’s graphic work, Stanley Jones remembers their relationship in the studio:
Lis became fascinated by printmaking, coming to the Studio in Plaistow, where we would converse about her ideas and their interpretation in terms of lithography. It needed a balance between image and technique. Being a sculptor, she loved the process of working on stone, seeing the image transformed into a printable object which could then again be reworked and changed, according to her wishes. She was very happy with the collaborative nature of printmaking.
Elisabeth Frink, The Grey Rider, 1970, signed, lithograph
The subsequent prints which she made over the years complemented her work as a sculptor – they were not a separate sphere of work… She came to the Studio with sketchbook notes. Then she would begin working on the stone. We used the very rare, old, traditional, flat lithographic stone which you can only get from Bavaria.
Elisabeth Frink, Green Man (Black), 1992, lithograph, signed
A lithograph is drawn with line and tone in a very direct way. Lis worked out the composition in terms of the space available. First she used charcoal or conte crayon. This gave her the opportunity to make a statement without commitment…Then she would begin the print using the lithographic crayon, and draw firmly using sharpened or the broad side of sticks. She was very spontaneous and would draw the broad outline on to the stone. Then she would begin to scrape and rub the surface, and use her fingers to draw and to rub, to develop the idea. She loved the tactileness of it. She would feel the quality of the stone. I would have a series of stones rubbed down by hand and resurfaced, ready prepared for her, with different grades of coarseness (this provides different texture when printed).
Elisabeth Frink, Boar, 1970, lithograph, signed
Each print was developed from an idea, but was not preconceived; in other words, it was never a copy of a drawing. Often the result was very different from the original idea – but she loved it if it had its own particular spirit.
Elisabeth Frink, Spinning Man II, 1965, lithograph, signed
During the 60s there was a great printmaking boom and Lis didn’t want to flood the market; so she decided, with her publishers Waddington, to make only small editions of 25 each. Each was carefully and painstakingly made and printed by hand in small editions on handmade paper… She liked to hold the paper and feel its lustrous, soft, but firm, texture.
Stanley Jones, 1933-2023
