ELISABETH Frink never compromised on style.

One of the most exciting sculptors of the 20th Century, she ignored commercial fashions, creating works that combine the fragile nature of humanity with its power.

Running until September 29, Abbot Hall Art Gallery stages a major exhibition of work by emotive sculptor Dame Elisabeth Frink, a quarter of a century after her death.

The exhibition features bronze sculpture, maquettes, and works on paper made throughout the artist’s career. And there's a rare Frink private commission that will be on show in public for the first time.

The show also contains loans from the National Portrait Gallery, including a sculpture of Frink by Robert Clatworthy.

Kerri Offord, Lakeland Arts - which owns Abbot Hall - head of curatorial said that Frink was uncompromising in her creative output, creating exciting and emotive works that were both autobiographical and politically charged: "Her individual style and unique subjects bucked the main trends of the 20th Century, and yet her work was always in style."

Elisabeth Frink: Fragility and Power is the first time the Kendal gallery has dedicated an entire exhibition to the sculptor as well as the first large scale show of her work in northern England.

The exhibition is presented in collaboration with The Ingram Collection and there are a number of works on loan from private collectors.

Fragility and Power coincides with increased attention on Elisabeth Frink, who was born in Suffolk in 1930 and died in Dorset on April 18, 1993.

Two large works Walking, Madonna, 1981 and Riace lll, 1986, will be displayed in the Georgian entrance hall and ground floor galleries at Abbot Hall. Up a loft, the exhibition will continue across three rooms. The first gallery will display works by those who influenced and inspired Frink as a young art student in London. Works by FE McWilliam and Reg Butler, among others, are on show.

Frink's experiences as a child with an absent father at Dunkirk, hiding from a German fighter plane near her home in Suffolk, to the discovery of a book on Rodin at a Convent School in Devon and her encounters with sexism at art school, can all be found in her artwork.

Tied in superbly to Fragility and Power is another Abbot Hall show that focuses on her greatest influence - Auguste Rodin.

Another cultural master stroke for the important regional gallery, Rodin: rethinking the fragment runs from August 10 until October 27, exploring how Rodin, the originator of modern sculpture, was inspired by art of ancient Greece and Rome.

And, of course, the exhibition will feature Rodin's iconic The Thinker, on loan from the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, alongside three objects from the British Museum.

Both exhibitions will be the subject of two evening lectures at Abbot Hall: Elisabeth Frink and her Influences takes place on September 13, and Auguste Rodin and his Influences on September 27. Both start at 6pm.

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