Serpentine Sculpture 73

This exhibition was the first of the Serpentine’s summer shows for 1973 and was devoted to sculpture.

This exhibition was the first of the Serpentine’s summer shows for 1973, intended to give visitors to the gallery a chance to see the best work being produced by emerging British artists. The series of exhibitions was part of the Serpentine Gallery’s popular and largely open-submission summer shows, which ran throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s.

This year, however, the Serpentine Gallery invited its selection committee to organise four exhibitions each based on a particular discipline – sculpture, painting, photography, and graphics.

This, the first show in the series for 1973, was devoted to the medium of sculpture and was curated by sculptor and Serpentine Committee member for 1973, Hubert Dalwood.

Among the young artists Dalwood selected was Paul Neagu, the Romanian-born sculptor mentored by Brancussi, who had recently moved to Britain. This was one of the first opportunities the British public had to see Neagu’s works prior to his first major public solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, in 1975.