Lee Tribe constructed King—a human-scale assemblage of welded steel—without referring to drawings or preconceived ideas for the sculpture. Rather, he worked directly and spontaneously with materials available in his studio. He began with the central vertical form, which struck him as suggestive of the “presence of a figure rising up, standing proud.” This evocation persisted, he added, as “the sculpture took on a regal feeling, which grew stronger and stronger, hence the name King.” Referring to the effect of his dense layering of lines, shapes, and chains onto the central core, Tribe remarked, “The process of making exists clearly and is at one with the image of the completed sculpture.” 

Steel has been integral to Tribe’s life since his teenage years, when he worked as a steelworker in the London dockyards. He began his pursuit of fine art in the early 1970s, attending Saint Martin’s School of Art and Birmingham School of Art in his native England before moving to the United States. He continued his education at the New York Studio School, where he himself has been an instructor since 1979. A sculptor for more than fifty years, Tribe has created large and small, “dense” and “open,” and nonrepresentational and figurative works.