Gaudia Brzeska was one of several young artists cut down in his youth during the First World War. He was immensely prolific in his short lifetime and made a number of portraits. These were not central to his output, but like many other young artists the occasional portrait commission must have been very welcome.

 

His bust of Brodzky is a tour de force and his highly stylised carved stone portrait of Ezra Pound is a great example of how far we can move away from realism and still maintain a strong essence of the subject.

 

I believe he belongs in our gallery for the very freshness of approach to the subject clearly inspired by the various new movements of the time including Cubism and Vorticism and without doubt his work had a profound influence on 20th-century modernist sculpture in England and France.