Startled Bird

The bird is a recurring formal metaphor in Bernard Meadows' work of the post-war years. With its feathers tilted back in defensive stance, its surface sharply modelled, it can be read as an image symbolic of the post war political climate. The bronze has an energy which is nervous, dramatic and provocative. Distorted in form, its scratched and worked surface, with a fine patination, follows on from the tradition of expressive figuration typified by Picasso, and the 'pent-up energy' of which Moore had written in the thirties.