Line, Edge, Shadow: drawings and sculpture

Explore Nigel Hall RA's acclaimed abstract sculptures and drawings.

Nigel Hall RA is one of Britain’s most distinguished sculptors. His outside works, principally made of corten steel, painted steel or bronze, are concerned with three-dimensional space, mass and line. His abstract and geometric sculptures give as much prominence to voids and shadows as to the solidity of material, and each work changes with light and viewpoin,t reflecting the landscapes that inspired them.

Nigel was born in Bristol and grew up in the Gloucestershire countryside. He studied at the West of England College of Art from 1960-64 and went on to the Royal College of Art from 1964-67. A Harkness Fellowship in 1967 took him to the United States for two years, choosing California as his base to experience both the city of Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert.

Career and Awards

From 1971 to 1981, Nigel was a lecturer and external examiner of the Royal College of Art, London, and ran the MA sculpture course at Chelsea College of Art and Design. In 1995, he won the Pollock-Krasner Award, and in 2001, he had a residency at Chretzeturm, Stein Am Rhein, Switzerland. In 2002, Nigel was awarded the Jack Goldhill Sculpture Prize, and a year later he was elected a Royal Academician. In 2017, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Arts, London.

Exhibitions and Gallery Representation

Nigel had his first European solo show in 1967 at Galerie Givaudan Paris. Since then, he has had over 100 solo and over 300 group exhibitions around the world. Major solo exhibitions include the Kunsthalle Mannheim 2004, a major retrospective at Yorkshire Sculpture Park 2008 and at The Royal Academy, London 2011. In 2020 he exhibited in South Korea at Mo J Gallery. Recent solo shows include Annely Juda Fine Art Gallery in London, 2021, Galerie Andres Thalmann Zürich 2022, Pangolin, London and Galerie Scheffel, Germany in 2023, Galerie Andres Thalmann Paris 2024.

On his Magdalene show, he says:

I was delighted to be offered an exhibition at the beautiful Robert Cripps Gallery at Magdalene College, Cambridge as it seems the perfect venue for an exhibition of my drawings and small sculptures. It has a long vista for experiencing larger works on paper and an intimacy conducive to exploring smaller pieces.

As well as drawings, there are three fine vitrines which will display small scale sculptures, both maquettes as well as finished works and also notebooks.

I find there is a symbiotic relationship between two and three dimensional works in which neither take precedence over the other. Drawing has played a constant and vital part in my work and not solely as preliminary studies for sculpture. It has allowed for related explorations freed from the tyranny of gravity to which sculpture is inextricably chained.

Certain views, trees and objects might draw me to them and then I reciprocate by drawing them in return. Drawing for me can be seeing, thinking, exploring, connecting and distilling. You need to know something about the subject in order to draw it and once drawn, it’s never forgotten.

The non-referential or ‘finished’ drawings shown in the Gallery, are complete works with the same status as my sculpture and mostly use the language of geometry as their mode of expression. In these works the subject is the form and the form is the subject.

Exhibition catalogue

Header image: Drawing 1932’ 2022, Nigel Hall RA.