Antanas Brazdys was born in Vašuokėnai, Lithuania in 1939. After immigrating to the United States in 1947, he studied sculpture in Chicago before moving to England for further training at London’s Royal College of Art. Known for his innovative use of stainless steel, Brazdys created bold public works across the UK, blending abstraction with human forms, helping to redefine postwar British sculpture.
Sculptor Antanas Brazdys was born in Vašuokėnai, Lithuania on 6 April 1939. During the final stages of the Second World War, his family fled the country and settled in a Lithuanian refugee camp in Germany. In 1947, they immigrated to the United States, where he was brought up in a creatively rich environment shaped by his architect father and choreographer mother, which nurtured his sensitivity to rhythm, structure, and form. From 1956–61, he studied sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, earning the Edward L. Ryerson Grant for study abroad. He chose London, enrolling at the Royal College of Art (RCA), where he won the Sainsbury Prize the following year. He later taught sculpture at the RCA, as well as at Gloucester and Cheltenham Colleges of Art, before becoming an independent artist.
He first gained major attention in 1965 with his solo exhibition at Hamilton Galleries in London (founded by émigré, Annely Juda), followed by a joint exhibition with painter, Alan Wood at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, in 1966. Critics noted a remarkable maturity in his work, unusual for a sculptor aged just 26. One reviewer described his pieces as possessing ‘an almost religious solemnity’ that transported the viewer into a timeless realm (K. Barėnas, AIDAI website). Brazdys' sculptural language sought not to deliberately shock or unsettle, but to express symbolic clarity, the human form, and a conviction in the enduring power of beauty—qualities he believed were increasingly absent from modern sculpture. As he once stated, he was ‘tired of ugliness and nightmares’ (Spencer 1966).
Brazdys worked almost exclusively in stainless steel, which he mastered with both technical precision and aesthetic flair. He initially muted his surfaces with black paint, but later embraced highly polished finishes that reflected and refracted light—an artistic breakthrough that transformed the visual language of his work. Critics noted how these gleaming surfaces enhanced the fluid curves of his forms, while concealing all traces of welding. The shift marked not only refined craftsmanship, but also a deeper engagement with ideas of harmony, movement, and human presence. Peter Fuller described his approach as ‘deliberately spectacular’, highlighting how Brazdys exploited the material’s structural and reflective potential in works that balanced daring form with disciplined execution (Lituanus, 1980). His influences included sculptors, Jacques Lipchitz, Archipenko, Henry Moore, and Alexander Calder—all rooted in Cubism and Constructivism—whose impact can be felt in his sculptural commitment to clarity, structure, and the expressive potential of the human form.
Many of his works explore the boundary between abstraction and figuration, often evoking the human form through minimalist, sensuous geometry. Marriage (1965), for instance, is a sculpture composed of welded steel tubes and spheres that suggests physical intimacy through structural simplicity. Though abstract, it reveals an emotive core and a keen sense of balance and poise. Following the success of his debut, Brazdys became increasingly visible in the British art world. His participation in the Battersea Park Open-Air Sculpture Exhibition in 1966 introduced him to a wider public, where he exhibited alongside Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Eduardo Paolozzi. He contributed a striking welded steel sculpture, which stood out for its originality and strength of form, to the Hamilton Galleries group show, which later transferred to the Midland Group Gallery in Nottingham in 1967 (Nottingham Guardian 1967, p. 7). His sculpture Large Welded Steel was prominently featured in the Royal College of Art group exhibition at the Arts Council Galleries in 1965, where it was lauded as ‘an exciting combination of shapes piled one on top of the other’ and described as recalling the monumentality of early industrial machines (Country Life 1965, p. 74). His 1971 solo exhibition at Annely Juda Fine Art, a gallery known for supporting modernist sculpture, further consolidated his critical standing. Brazdys was also a regular exhibitor in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition during the 1980s.
Throughout his career, Brazdys received numerous high-profile public commissions. Among the most significant is Ritual, a stainless-steel sculpture installed in front of Woolgate House in London in 1969, after he won a national competition with over 600 entries. Notably, it was one of the first abstract public sculptures in the City of London (BBC News 2016), marking a pivotal shift in the urban landscape. In 1970, he created Osaka for the British Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Japan. Later acquired by the Leicestershire Graphic Education Committee, the work now stands in Egerton Lodge Memorial Gardens, Melton Mowbray. In Harlow New Town, renowned for its public sculpture, Brazdys contributed Echo (1973) to the town park and High Flying to Harlow Theatre. Another major work, The Silver Bird, was installed in 1976 outside St Thomas' Hospital in London, further cementing his presence in the capital’s civic landscape. Antanas Brazdys died in London, England in 2022. His public sculptures can be seen at the Woolgate Exchange in the City of London, in Harlow Sculpture Town in Essex, and at the Sculpture Park in Surrey, among other locations.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Antanas Brazdys]
Publications related to [Antanas Brazdys] in the Ben Uri Library