Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1546656
I met the legendary American film maker Warren Forma many years ago at an art fair in Miami. He was with his wife Rollene and asked some questions about the British sculpture we were showing. at was the first I had heard about 5 British Sculptors Work and Talk, a 1964 documentary film made following his visit to the studios of Armitage, Butler, Chadwick, Hepworth and Moore. From the trip there is the wonderful film, a book of photographs with text, beautifully designed by Arnold Skolnick, and even an LP record of his interviews. He shot in colour with a cine camera and recorded his conversations with the artists on a tape recorder. We stayed in touch and aer he died I visited Rollene at her apartment on Broadway and was able to look at some of the archive material from his trip to England as well as the subsequent New York exhibition. For years we have discussed at the gallery the possibility of creating an exhibition inspired by this project and promoting the film. Incidentally the studio of each of the artists is still accessible and it is quite possible to imagine how it was when Forma turned up with his camera over sixty years ago. Art historian Dr. Judith Le Grove has done some exceptional research on Forma and writes about the challenges that all art film makers face. Her essay follows this preface together with a collection of sculptures by each artist, curated by Tania Sutton at the gallery. e exhibition will be our main feature at Frieze Masters from October 14th to 18th and then at the gallery from October 22nd to November 20th. We will be showing the film at the gallery and copies are also available from www.formaartfilms.com. My thanks go to Tom and Ananur Forma for their support for this project. is is another in our sequence of exhibitions dedicated to key figures in the British art world in the 1950s and 60s. We regularly exhibit Henry Moore (with a major exhibition planned for Spring 2027) and Lynn Chadwick. ese two artists are particularly central to my 45 year art world career and of course the gallery regularly shows Armitage, Butler and Hepworth. We have also championed some of the less well known figures of post war British art with recent exhibitions featuring the curator Lilian Somerville, the collector Margaret Gardiner and in 2025 Jim Ede and Kettle's Yard. We are a busy gallery with limited resources and don't always have the luxury of time to plan and resource these rather ambitious projects. So bravo once again to Judith LeGrove for the quality of her research and writing and to Tania Sutton for spending a long hot summer preparing this exhibition. And a big thank you to the estates and collectors who have generously lent sculptures. Peter Osborne September 2026 PREFACE Le: Henry Moore studying found objects in the Bourne Maquette Studio (detail), 2 February 1978, © Gemma Levine / Tate 5