Horizontal movement No.1

Horizontal Movement No. 1 has been composed of seven sheets of steel welded together making a curved, flat form. The composition of planes that gently rise and fall give the dynamic movement of the title. Adams was very interested in how he could convey movement through a static sculpture. Adams explained ‘I am concerned with energy, a physical property inherent in metal. A major aim I would say, is movement, which I seem to get through asymmetry.’ [1] In 1960 Adams made another series of works titled Horizontal Movement, which were composed of planes of steel on a stand, but the planes were triangles at different angles so were more three-dimensional. Finally in 1960, Horizontal Movement No. 4 was composed of rods of steel.

Horizontal Movement No. 1 is very two-dimensional, other than two of the planes which break out of the flat sequence, one being curved over the other planes. Compiler of Robert Adams’ catalogue raisonné, Alastair Grieve, writes how Adams exploited welding in sculpture: ‘He brought out the linearity of iron rods, the thin planarity of steel sheets, the beaded seams of joined plates and the sparse strength of spot welds.’ [2] In this work and others of this series, Adams emphasises the properties of the welded steel as Grieve describes.

Adams welded the sheets of steel together before the sculpture was covered with a layer of bronze at a workshop where the surface was mechanically cleaned, in a process known as shot blasting, before being sprayed with molten zinc and then bronze. To make it look like steel again, Adams treated the surface with a chemical solution to give the dark colour of steel, rather than the orange of bronze.

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