LONDON.- To celebrate the extraordinary life of the late sculptor Charlotte Mayer, the private view of A Life in the Studio, held last week at Pangolin London, documented Mayer’s artistic evolution over her seventy-year career. As well as exhibiting a vast body of Mayer’s work, including three new bronzes made last year and exhibited for the first time, Pangolin London recreated the artist’s intimate home studio where she worked for the last four decades of her life in an exhibition that officially opened yesterday and will continue through May 26th.

The power behind Charlotte Mayer’s sculpture is her strong affinity with the natural world. Spending idyllic days in the garden of Das Rosel Haus (The House of Roses) where she grew up in Prague until the end of the 1930s, Charlotte learned about the rhythmic structures of nature and the patterns of the material world. Many of her sculptures are inspired by skeletons, seed pods, leaves, shells and ammonites, as well as bringing to the foreground the strength of nature’s elements. In her outdoor sculpture simple curves and subtle plays of light sit in perfect harmony with their natural surroundings.

Mayer also draws her inspiration from meditation - the stillness and calm an important part of her creative life - making the spirit somehow present in the form. The complex constructions and elegant organic surfaces she has created over the years are imbued with strength, while also emanating serenity and poise, making her pieces instantly recognisable.

CHARLOTTE MAYER CZECH, 1929-2022

Born in Prague and emigrating to the UK in 1939 at the age of 10, Charlotte Mayer was one of only a few women to study at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art in the late 40s, at a time when women were not always welcomed into the sculpture studio. Her unquenchable energy and resilience however put her in a good stead and she started creating forms that were both visually arresting and emotionally expressive.

Her sculpture also works well in an architectural setting and she has been commissioned to create work for a number of commercial institutions including BNP Paribas, London. Mayer is represented in a number of other corporate, institutional and private collections in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and the USA.