Teddy Boy and Girl, 1955

These two angular figures are dressed in drainpipe trousers and pleated coats: the well-known flamboyant fashion of 1950s ‘teddy boys and girls’. The subculture emerged in Britain in the 1950s after rationing ended, allowing teenagers to carve their own identity for the first time. Their style drew on a combination of Edwardian and American rock & roll influences, and their reputation was one of violence. Art historian Michael Bird has suggested that this sculpture is “probably the first sculptural celebration of contemporary youth culture”, and that its subject shows the artist as a provocative “bourgeoisie-baiter”.

This sculpture was probably made for the 1956 Venice Biennale, where Chadwick represented Britain and won the International Sculpture Prize, which had previously been won by older artists with established international reputations.

Chadwick made the model for this sculpture by welding together an iron skeleton and then covering it with a 'stolit' skin (a mixture of iron filings and plaster), which he would build up and carve either dry or wet. He later cast the figures in bronze. As the iron skeleton remained evident, the artist described them as “like crabs”: “they've got their bones on the outside”.