In this week’s Hidden Gems series, Liss Llewellyn are delighted to present a group of works based around the theme of three-dimensionality.

Among the most exciting works in this campaign is Eric Gill’s (1882-1940) largest and most important sculpture in wood: the Rossall School War Memorial Altarpiece. This reredos was completed in 1927, and exhibited at the Goupil Gallery in the same year. It has been under the guardianship of the School ever since. The Council have now granted Liss Llewellyn exclusive permission to offer this masterpiece for sale.

Elsewhere in the selection, there are the sheet metal sculptures of Rachel Reckitt (1908-1995), who exhibited alongside Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth as part of the London group. Then there’s the Sculpted Female Head of Leila Faithfull (1896-1994), who studied at the Montparnasse art school favoured by Giacometti and Alexander Calder: the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Another link to Calder can be found in John Cecil Stephenson’s (1889-1965) Divertimento II, which explores in two-dimensions the same optical material that Alexander Calder was treating in his mobiles. Indeed, there’s a lively exchange of ideas between the work of these two artists, as Calder rented a flat in Hampstead in 1933, and was a frequent visitor to Stephenson’s studio. Jack Smith (1928-2011) likewise plays with the notion of three-dimensionality on a 2d surface, and admitted with some relish that he liked confusing the spectator with different realities, as in his Painted Relief, 1962.

A number of works in this exhibition also represent the practice of public sculpture. The Statue of Liberty can be seen in Clare Leighton’s woodblock (which is itself a wonderful, sculptural object), while Eric Fraser (1902-1983) conjures up a similar, monumental form in his satire, Now my boy ‘Arry. And then there’s Willi Soukop (1907-1995) – who taught Elisabeth Frink and Robert Clatworthy at the Chelsea School of Art – and whose plaster maquette for his frieze at Loughborough University is included among the offering.