Laurence Bradshaw

Laurence Bradshaw (1899–1978) was an English sculptor, printmaker, and artist.[1] Bradshaw had been a socialist since his youth and had joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in the early 1930s.[2]

Tomb of Karl Marx, by Laurence Bradshaw

Bradshaw joined the artist Frank Brangwyn as his assistant in the 1920s; Brangwyn himself had been an assistant to the socialist polymath William Morris.[2] Bradshaw designed several posters for London Transport from 1935 to 1937.[1]

In 1955, Bradshaw won the commission to design the Tomb of Karl Marx at his burial place in Highgate Cemetery.[2] Bradshaw designed the whole of Marx's monument including the plinth and the calligraphy of the texts on the monument, but did not sign the finished work. Bradshaw considered that his design must be "...not a monument to a man only but to a great mind and a great philosopher."[1][2] The tomb was designated a Grade I listed monument in 1974.[3]

Other notable communist figures that Bradshaw sculpted included the African-American scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois, the Trinidadian musician and actor Edric Connor, the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, and the British communist leader Harry Pollitt.[2]