LONDON.- Sotheby's London will offer 18 monumental works from the Jerwood Sculpture Collection in its Modern and Post-War British Art Evening and Day Sales on 10th and 11th May 2012. Highlights from the Collection, which has been exhibited in the grounds of Ragley Hall in Warwickshire since 2005, include important works by Antony Gormley, Dame Elisabeth Frink and Peter Randall-Page, as well as three winners of the Jerwood Sculpture Prize - Judith Dean, Benedict Carpenter and Gereon Krebber. The collection comes to the market with a combined estimate of £650,000 - £1,000,000.

Alan Grieve, Chairman of the Jerwood Foundation commented: “We assembled the Jerwood Sculpture Collection over the last 12 years with the intention of offering an insight into the development of the medium in Britain. The sculptures offered for sale will include some important works from the generation who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as a dynamic group of young sculptors working today. The works are being sold on behalf of the Jerwood Foundation to further its dedicated support of the visual and performing arts.”

Sotheby’s Frances Christie, Director, Head of Department, Modern British Art added: “Sotheby’s is honoured to present works from such a prestigious and imaginatively curated Collection of outdoor sculpture. Collectors will have the unique opportunity to view these stunning monumental works in context, before the sale, while they are on display in the grounds of Ragley Hall.”

Dame Elisabeth Frink’s Walking Man was the first sculpture to enter the Jerwood Collection in 1999. It belongs to a highly important series of male nudes conceived in the mid-1980s, all of which were originally purchased by WH Smith Plc. for its headquarters in Swindon. It also became the first sculpture in a major new series of four figures known as the Riace warriors and this work was later retitled Riace I. The sculpture is estimated at £150,000-250,000.

Antony Gormley’s Insider VIII/ Weeds 1 is one of a series of sculptures entitled Insiders, which occupied the artist from 1996-1999 and were experiments in the reduction of form. The work, executed in iron, is a two-thirds reduction of Gormley’s own body. Conceived in 1998, the sculpture is unique and estimated at £150,000-250,000.

Peter Randall-Page’s monumental Cornish granite carving, Green Fuse, was commissioned by the Jerwood Foundation in 2007. Its title refers to the 1934 poem by Dylan Thomas, The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower, and embodies one of the prime sources of inspiration in Randall-Page’s sculpture, the elemental power of nature. Created to sit in a formalised English landscape, the work, which draws on Indian temple sculpture, gently subverts the artifice of its setting and is estimated at £60,000-80,000.

The sale also features the work of three winners of the Jerwood Sculpture Prize: Benedict Carpenter won the first prize in 2001, for his proposal for Universal Object. Estimated at £10,000-15,000, this work in bronze is both strongly biomorphic and reflects Carpenter’s interest in the Surrealist dolls of Hans Bellmer.

Judith Dean’s bronze Field (winner 2005) is cast from a section of ploughed earth and finished with a rich earthy patination. The work, estimated at £8,000-12,000, was the artist’s response to the combination of Capability Brown’s extraordinary grounds at Ragley Hall and the simplicity of the surrounding cultivated fields.

Gereon Krebber’s Tin of 2003, estimated at £12,000-£18,000, reflects the artist’s inspiration by the everyday objects he encounters. In this work in aluminium, he engages the viewer with a monumental version of a tiny household object.

The auction will also include works by Kenneth Armitage, Michael Ayrton, Fernando Casasempere, Marzia Colonna, Julian Wild, Michael Lyons, Sarah More, Ronald Rae, Sokari Douglas Camp and Peter Hayes.

The Jerwood Sculpture Park was opened to the public at Witley Court, Worcestershire (English Heritage), in 2000, to encourage greater understanding of monumental sculpture and in 2001, the prestigious Jerwood Sculpture Prize was founded to promote and reward emerging talent within the medium of outdoor sculpture. The sculpture collection moved to the spectacular grounds of Ragley Hall, Warwickshire, in 2005, providing an exceptional environment in which to experience and explore the unique relationship between sculpture and landscape.

*Estimates do not include buyer’s premium