Elijah of Hammersmith

In a large whitewashed studio in the London borough of Hammersmith works a wild-haired, chalk-faced old man who wryly likes to compare himself to the Prophet Elijah. "You have to pay for working alone for 40 years," Sculptor Leon Underwood says. "The ravens fed me; but since ravens do not have watches, they often came very irregularly." Today, at 71, Underwood does not have to depend so much on ravens. People have begun to buy his work, for when, after an eight-year hiatus, he finally consented to a one-man show in London two years ago, British critics raved about his youthful ability to turn, as the Manchester Guardian's Eric Newton put it, "hard bronze into lambent flame." Last week the U.S. got its first good look in years at Sculptor Underwood's work in an appealing exhibition at Manhattan's Acquavella Galleries.

Underwood's figures give a first impression of having been created by a slightly dotty humorist. They cavort and prance, leap and fly, as if under the spell of a pleasantly chaotic orchestra. At times the rhythms become so frenetic that the small figures look as if they might shake themselves apart. Yet the surface humor quickly peels away to reveal more serious intentions underneath. Underwood's sculptures are expressions of ideas, some of which he transforms into dances of joy and some into gestures of despair.

Beneath Bronze Skin. This unfashionable "literary" approach to art, as well as an almost compulsive shyness about exhibiting, has kept Underwood out of the public notice. But he has done his share to set the stage for modern British sculpture. At one time he ran a small drawing school, which a promising sculptor named Henry Moore attended. Moore still credits Underwood with having done more for him than any earlier teacher, and the two men are often compared and contrasted by British critics.

Both artists pioneered in developing "open sculpture." But while Moore pierces his solids to let space in, Underwood wraps paper-thin bronze around space, leaving the form incomplete so that his figures can be seen both inside and out. letting space and form unite. And while Moore's sculptures have become more and more wedded to the landscape. Underwood's flighty figures often try to free themselves from earth and escape into the atmosphere. The figures writhe, bend and stretch, each to some internal rhythm of its own. "Beneath the bronze skin," says Underwood, "movement is everything."

A Dimension of Mystery. For so mild and retiring a man, Underwood turns fierce when speaking of the "too rapid abandonment of subject matter" that he finds in modern art. "I agree passionately with Jacob Epstein. After trying his hand at abstraction, he told me, 'It's too easily exhausted,' meaning there is no mystery in it."

Spiritually, Underwood feels that he is the descendant of William Blake: "Like Blake, I rewrite the Bible in my mind and then use my interpretation for my work." Biblical or not, the sculptures always carry a message, and they do so in a strange mixture of whimsy and anguish. The Gleaner (see opposite page) could be merely a grim glimpse of an old peasant woman bending to her daily drudgery, but Underwood had a more cheerful inspiration. "What would a woman want to be doing gleaning ears of corn?" he asks. "She is picking up a man. Look at the text: 'And her hap was to light upon, a part of the field belonging to Boaz.' The work is meant to represent the plot laid down by nature for us all." Lifesection has this play of moods in reverse. It is for a moment a delightful bit of sculptural acrobatics--until it is seen as perhaps suggesting a lynching.

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