Barbara Hepworth took British and world sculpture to new levels of expressive lyrical abstraction. While we can look for meanings in them, her sculptures can be enjoyed and experienced simply for their look and feel. These days her sculptures have a timeless quality to them, which was a deliberate ploy as she sought to combine antiquity and mythology with the cutting-edge present. She also, early on, admired the Cubist and blockish Return to Order paintings of Picasso, and some of her figurative sculptures of the 1920s and 1930s reflected his influence.

Elisabeth Frink is probably one of the most popular British sculptors of the 20th century. The subjects for her work were usually birds, horses and men. Her sculptures of birds, and hybrid bird-human forms, reflected the human condition as she saw it. Her sculptures of horses reflected her life-long fondness for these graceful animals. But it’s her sculptures of men that are her most startling or revelatory. That’s because, she saw men as both heroes and villains, and her sculptures of fallen (male) angels, Greek warriors and a Dying King reflect this point of view. In doing so she was heavily influenced by wartime experiences and memories.