[3] Many of the sculptures in the pavilion were of human or animal figures, and several showed the influence of the continental sculptors Germaine Richier and Alberto Giacometti, works by whom had been shown at the Anglo-French Art Centre in London in 1947.
In his catalogue description, Herbert Read wrote:These new images belong to the iconography of despair, or of defiance; and the more innocent the artist, the more effectively he transmits the collective guilt.
Here are images of flight, of ragged claws "scuttling across the floors of silent seas", of excoriated flesh, frustrated sex, the geometry of fear.
[3][6]: 871 In 1953 Butler won the international competition to design the monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner, chosen over more than two thousand entries including submissions by Naum Gabo and Barbara Hepworth; the prize was £4500, enough at the time to buy a large house.
[6]: 873 While the Geometry of Fear group initially consisted only of the eight sculptors who exhibited in Venice in 1952, and never had any of the characteristics of an art movement, other artists have been associated with it, or thought to have been influenced by it.