While the new tendencies manifest in the field of pamting in Eu-rope at the begmning of the 70's, above all in Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, were expressely aimed at shaking off the two preceding «avantgarde» decades 1960-80, fewer mno-vations initially made a mark in the field of sculpture. Only German painters such as Penk, Baselitz or Immendorf with their re-markable wood sculptures
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made a strong impact (notably Baselitz in 1980 with his figure at the Venice Biennale).Little of im-port seemed to be emanating from England with regard to New Painting and sculpture. Only Bruce McClean, known for his in-volvement with Concept Art at the close of the 60’s and a pio-neer in the performance movement in England, was beginning to transform his «space-time-sculptures» into loose, large-format works in crayon as pictorial scores of performances. When I visited Bruce McLean in 1980 for the Venice Biennale, a fragmentary picture of recent English artists gradually began to take shape, at first based exclusively on contacts outside England. At the same Biennale I met Tony Cragg, whose work I had previously seen only in reproduction, where it had impres-sed me as being almost too strongly influenced by Richard Long. This impression was corrected upon closer inspection; my curiosity was aroused. The casual application of techniques that seemed to be related to the examples set by people like
Long, combined with the search for materials similar to the re-fuse objects favored by Spoerri, Boyle in the 60’s, yielded works which - thanks to the immediacy of Cragg's approach -were singularly refreshing, though not directly addressed to the question of what lies behind it all. Unresolved questions that will not be ignored are always fascinating and stimulate further exploration of an artist’s work.
