Robert Adams was a sculptor and designer. From about 1930 -1950 he lived in Hardingstone

Hardingstone

Hardingstone is a village in Northamptonshire, England. It is on the southern edge of Northampton, and now forms a suburb of the town within the Northampton Borough Council area. It is about from the town centre...

 then a village about four miles outside Northampton.

Education and early life

He left school at 14 and did manual work, some in the engineering industry which may have proved useful in his later artistic creations.

From 1937-1946 he attended evening classes part-time in life drawing and painting at the Northampton School of Art.

Career

From 1949-60 he taught at the Central School of Art and Design and between 1950-80 he was one of Britain's foremost abstract sculptors.

Some of his works are in the Tate Britain collection

Tate Britain

Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...

 and the modern art in New York, Rome, and Turin, the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art

São Paulo Museum of Modern Art

The São Paulo Museum of Modern Art, , is located in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo....

 and several other locations worldwide but he is virtually unknown in his home town. Apocalyptic Figure was commissioned by the Arts Council England

Arts Council England

Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...

 for the Festival of Britain

Festival of Britain

The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition in Britain in the summer of 1951. It was organised by the government to give Britons a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of war and to promote good quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities. The Festival's centrepiece was in...

 in 1951. Some of his large-scale sculptures can be seen at The Custom House, London, Heathrow Airport, and Shell Mex House

Shell Mex House

Shell Mex House is situated at number 80, Strand, London, UK. The current building was built in 1930-31 on the site of the Hotel Cecil and stands behind the original facade of the Hotel and between the Adelphi and the Savoy Hotel. Broadly Art Deco in style, it was designed by the architectural...

, London.

He had a retrospective at the Northampton Art Gallery in 1971.