GEOFFREY CLARKE: OBITUARY

Geoffrey Clarke: Obituary

Geoffrey Clarke was born on 28 November 1924: he died on 30 October 2014.  This is a personal summary of his obituary that was published in the Guardian newspaper on 8 November 2014.

Geoffrey Clarke: Obituary

Geoffrey Clarke was a British sculptor of ecclesiastical art and a stained glass maker who was most active and prominent in the 1950s.

Geoffrey Clarke was born in Derbyshire, the son of John Clarke - an architect who was also an etcher – and his wife Jean.  A grandparent had been a church outfitter.  Geoffrey Clarke attended three northern art schools and served in the Royal Air Force.  In 1948 he arrived at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London.

Early in his time at the RCA, Clarke opted to work in stained glass and a piece of his work attracted the attention of the college principal – Robin Darwin.  The piece was awarded a silver medal.  In 1950 Darwin proposed Clarke to be a member of team working with Basil Spence to rebuild Coventry Cathedral.

By 1952 Clarke had ten years’ worth of commissions.  These included the cross and candle sticks for the high altar in the new Coventry Cathedral and three of the ten nave windows in the new cathedral.  In 1962 a critic of the Sunday Telegraph newspaper listed the works that Clarke had completed in the previous ten years: a wide range that included relief panels, doors, light fittings, a mosaic, a tapestry and a relief sculpture in settings that included banks, an ocean liner, university colleges and a theatre. 

In 1952 the critic Herbert Read had given a name to the style of the group of eight sculptors who had exhibited in the British Pavilion in that year’s Venice Biennale: ‘the geometry of fear’.  These sculptors’ work was ‘spiky, organic ..... mutant, angry’.  Other artists in the group were Lynn Chadwick, William Turnbull, Reg Butler and Kenneth Armitage: several of these ‘dominated British sculpture for the decade to follow and, in some cases, beyond’.  Geoffrey Clarke had ‘a less enduring fame’.

Subsequent to 1964, Clarke’s popularity waned.  This is attributed to Clarke’s identification with Christian spirituality.  Clarke had been ‘one of the most experimental of the Geometry of Fear sculptors’ and he remained innovative.  At the height of his popularity, Clarke had modelled his works in polystyrene rather than in the traditional manner in clay.  The polystyrene gives the cast a ‘rough-hewn, bark-like quality that gives them the look of a medieval take on Anthony Caro’s contemporaneous Early One Morning’.  But this was not to Clarke’s advantage: fashion was ‘turning away from skill’: the contemporary pop art ‘demanded slickness and appropriation’ which was not Clarke’s forte. 

Clarke had ‘ceased to be a churchgoer’ in 1954 and ‘his leanings were roughly Jungian’.  His focus on the cross in his work is less a response to Christian symbolism and more a presentation of a universal archetype.  He remained amiable towards the religion that had ‘been both his salvation and his downfall’.