Provenance
Private collection
Note:
Arnold Auerbach had a diversity of talents: an able sculptor, painter, etcher and writer; in his lifetime he was primarily renowned as a decorative artist of unusually high calibre. In March 1922 the Architects Journal included an illustrated article on the conversion of the Scala Theatre, Birkenhead into a cinema. Aged only twenty four, Auerbach had carried out the designs in association with the architect James Bramwell and this was to be the first of many stylish joint projects completed by this partnership. The Architect's Journal was enthusiastic in its praise of the young designer's work declaring it to be a comprehensive decorative scheme on very original lines blending Greek formalism with decorative jazz, it is impossible to avoid being captivated by this colourful ensemble.'
Such early recognition resulted in a flood of prestigeous commissions and throughout the twenties and thirties Auerbach was chiefly occupied in designing interiors and producing sculptural decoration of theatres, cinemas, restaurants and even for the palace of the Nawab of Rampur.
Although he continued to paint, draw and etch up to the middle of the 1950's sculpture took precedence. Auerbach worked principally in plaster, and only cast works to order while he developed a special technique for patinating plaster to resemble bronze which he described in his book Modelled Sculpture and Plaster Casting published by Elek in 1961.
Auerbach was widely-read and had made a point of studying sculpture of all periods and cultures.
In 1953 he published Sculpture, a History in Brief (Elek) which shows that his understanding of the medium went way beyond a decorative facility. This diversity of knowledge comes through strongly in Auerbach's work which is frequently elegant but never trite.
An early interest in the Vorticist movement in which Auerbach was too young to play an active part was responsible for instilling muscle and dynamism into his sleek art deco compositions; and many of these designs show a language of simplified angular and semi-circular forms that owe much to an early admiration of the strident work of Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier Breszka.
"Swans', drawn in 1932 was probably a design for a decorative project. Its forms are forcefully sculptural in execution and arrangement and would easily translate into three dimensions or low relief. But this is no slight sketch: the vigorous thrusting shapes of 'Swans' closely relate to Jacob Epstein's studies for his 'Female Figure in Flenite' of 1913 where associations of tribal and Egyptian art fuse with mechanistic modernist sentiments and armoured insect forms.