Leon Underwood (born 25 December 1890 in Shepherds Bush,[1] London, died October 9, 1975) "The precursor of modern sculpture in Britain"[1] was a noted British sculptor, painter, draughtsman and engraver as well as a writer and illustrator, scholar, teacher, philosopher and stained glass and furniture craftsman.[1] He attended the Slade School of Art and founded the magazine The Island in 1931. His work was influenced by African and Cycladic designs.
His most dynamic and renowned output are his sculptures cast in bronze, carvings in marble, stone and wood and his drawings.
The body of his lifetime´s work however displays an immense range of mediums and activities and an expressive and technical mastery in what was at the time a ground breaking approach. His paintings included portraits and Mexican landscapes resulting from his youthful travels there.
Amongst his many writings he produced several books on ancient African sculpture including a study of the Ife and Benin heads "Bronzes of West Africa"[2] which expose not only his unusual apreciation of their artistic significance but also his profound understanding of the relationship of these pieces to the underlying culture and technology from which they originated. His access to the cave paintings of Altamira in Spain ignited his "New Philosophy" with regard to this interelationship of the expressiveness and technology of primitive art.[1]
He was a friend of Ralph Chubb with whom he sometimes collaborated and exhibited. One of his students was Henry Moore who later spoke of his indebtedness to the teaching of Underwood.[1] Underwood however was always convinced that subject matter formed a fundamental role behind the power of both his own and primitive art and had no belief in subject-less or purely abstract form in his own work.
He set up the Brook Green School, Hammersmith, London in the studio where he personally cast his bronzes, sculpted his carvings and propagated his ideas about primitive sculpture as "...forms created by inspired belief...". The art historian John Rothenstein[3] wrote of him in an introduction to a retrospective exhibition of his bronzes at The Minories, Colchester in 1969 "...the most versatile artist at work in Britain today..." but added a quotation of the artist: "The ravens fed me". He never sought fame or even an exhibition yet public collections holding works by Leon Underwood include The Tate, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the National Museum Cardiff, and the British Council Art Collection, London.
Underwood was married to Mary Colman. They had two sons, Garth and John, and one daughter, Jean.