Jacob Epstein

When Epstein’s ’Flenite Relief’ was last exhibited in the retrospective of 1987, it was entitled ’Flenite Relief: Woman Clasping a Phallus’. Last year, the Henry Moore Institute led a successful campaign to buy the relief from Epstein’s nephew in America and, in so doing, clarified a completely new reading which literally turns the sculpture on its head. Rather than displaying two quite separate scenes, this sculpture in fact represents a single figure of a woman stretched out over its two faces and delineates a totally different scene to the one implied by its previous title.

This in-focus exhibition makes the most of the intimate viewing conditions of the Institute’s smallest gallery to enable visitors to take a really close look at this remarkable two-sided sculpture and to see what it actually portrays. Radical now, and even more so in the years before the First World War, this sculpture shows the act of giving birth: a baby emerges from between the legs of a mother whose body is bent double.

Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) is commonly recognised as one of Britain’s most famous sculptors, but also as one of the most enigmatic. His work varies hugely, from the expressionistic realism of his modelled society portraits, to the massive carved forms of works such as Leeds Art Gallery’s ‘Maternity’ and the ‘Adam’ in Harewood House. ’Flenite Relief’ might be seen to operate on the threshold of two periods, combining a preoccupation with symbolist themes of birth and death with a modern approach to their depiction. In its own form – reminiscent of a grave-stone - the relief represents birth in the very shape of death.

‘Flenite Relief’ was purchased for Leeds Museums and Galleries with the help of Leeds City Council, the Leeds Art Collections Fund, the Henry Moore Institute, MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, The Heritage Lottery Fund and The Art Fund, the UK’s leading art charity. divider

Jacob Epstein