Elisabeth Frink (b.1930, Suffolk) was one of the most inventive and visionary female sculptors of the Post War period. With a unique approach to surface texture she focused on portraying powerful, full-bodied human and animal forms that skilfully explored mass and volume to convey human dignity.

Having been brought up in a military family, Frink was particularly drawn to exploring male duality and 'Soldiers Head II', 1965 depicts the epitome of a strong man, thick set with a broken nose that seems distinctly at odds with the delicate ribbon at the back of his head. Writer Arie Hartog succinctly describes Frink's contradictory and ambivalent approach ' One of her methods of was to play on social types and stereotypes, with an undercurrent of subverting idealism and its quest for eternal beauty'.

In total, Frink completed a series of five Soldier's Heads and explored how subtle shifts in facial expression could alter the emotional and psychological effect of the form introducing ambivalent nuance rather than codified gesture which was so rooted in the traditional figurative canon.