Although his work underwent stylistic changes and shifts, the sculptor Leoncillo was committed to depicting the inner human condition. Born Leoncillo Leonardi in Spoleto, Italy, in 1915, his early works were pastoral and figurative, created in clay. It was a medium responsive to human touch, one he saw as a living substance capable of both destruction and rebirth. “I work the clay as if it were time: I shatter it, I reassemble it, I imbue it with the colour of wounded earth,” he said. “Thus the sculpture becomes both memory and gesture.” During the Second World War, Leoncillo shifted to a more experimental style, embracing the post-Cubism and Arte Informale styles. He died in 1968, only 52, in the midst of an award-winning career. In the gallery’s first solo exhibition on the sculptor, a through line of his sustained relationship with clay emerges. —Maggie Turner