Phyllida Barlow had a lifetime of adventure making art
The British sculptor, who died on March 12th, aged 78, represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2017
Her art emerged, she once said, from a childhood memory of climbing up an empty staircase, hoping for the sky. There, in that gaping space, she would feel the reach and stretch of plaster, cement, colour, surprise; the excitement of perilous moments; the sentient fear of vertigo; the big anthropomorphic shapes that stared and waited: dumb, curvaceous, still, biding their time. That was where the adventure began.
This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “Sculpting from stuff”
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