Dame Elisabeth Jean Frink  born 14 November 1930 passed in 18 April 1993. Frink was an English sculptor and printmaker. Born in Thurlow, Suffolk, Frink studied at the Guildford School of Art (1946–1949), under Willi Soukop, and at the Chelsea School of Art (1949–1953). She became part of a post-war group of British sculptors dubbed the Geometry of Fear School that included Reg Butler, Bernard Meadows, Kenneth Armitage and Eduardo Paolozzi. Frink explored many subject matters, including men, birds, dogs, horses and religious motifs. However, very seldom of the female form within her work. Her sculpture, lithographs and etchings drew on archetypes of masculine strength, struggle and aggression. Themes poignant for post-war artist.

Frink spent the early part of the war in Suffolk, witnessing damaged craft returning on fire and their tangled remains crashing into the otherwise peaceful English countryside. In 1952 she was the representative for Great Britain at the 1952 Venice Biennale, Frink was described by Herbert Read as “the most vital, the most brilliant and the most promising of the whole Biennale”. In the rugged, brutal and often contorted surfaces of her work, commentators see evidence of a post-war mood that reflected the destruction, terror and brutalisation of almost six years of worldwide conflict.

Her Times obituary noted the three essential themes in her work as “the nature of Man; the ‘horseness’ of horses; and the divine in human form”.