British Art News
The latest news in Modern and Contemporary British Art.
by Alex Leith
Charming wonkiness | Lucy Harwood, at Firstsite, Colchester
In 1920, 27-year-old Slade School graduate Lucy Harwood had an emergency appendix operation on the kitchen table of the house she lived in. 3 days later, it was discovered she was paralysed down her right side, and had lost the use of the right hand she painted with. But she was determined not to give up painting.
Lucy Harwood: Bold Impressions, which runs until April 14, is the third in an ongoing series at Firstsite exploring the careers of Benton End artists.
Splashy Sublime | Nick Archer at Long & Ryle
Discover the latest show at Long & Ryle gallery of Nick Archer, as well as a brief history of his practice.
Dancing men, prancing goats | John Craxton at Pallant House Gallery
The lifelong rejection of authority and convention that shaped John Craxton’s life can be in large part explained by his childhood connection with West Sussex, and, in particular, with the city of Chichester, where he was sent to board at a choir school, aged 11.
Now he’s back. A posthumous retrospective of Craxton’s six-decade career, A Modern Odyssey, curated by his biographer Ian Collins, opens at Pallant House in Chichester this weekend.
Teenage Raphael | Clara Klinghoffer at Crossing Borders
It’s 1915, and the painter Bernard Meninsky, life drawing tutor at London’s Central School of Arts + Crafts, has been charged with looking through the portfolio of a fifteen-year-old girl, Clara Klinghoffer. A task which, one would imagine, he was expecting to be humdrum, turned out to be anything but. “Good Lord,” he stated. “That child draws like da Vinci.”
Klinghoffer’s 1923 painting Bananas, of an East End peddler, is included in the exhibition Crossing Borders: Internationalism in Modern British Art, at British Art Fair 2023.
Secular altarpiece | The Gold Metaverse, by David Breuer-Weil at SOLO CONTEMPORARY
A major work by the artist David Breuer-Weil will serve as the centrepiece and the entrance feature of the SOLO CONTEMPORARY section at British Art Fair. The piece, titled The Gold Metaverse, is inspired by the vast 15th-century polyptych The Ghent Altarpiece, by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, which dominates the interior of St Bavo’s Cathedral in the medieval Belgian city.
A restless wave | John Bellany at Lemon Street Gallery, Truro
In 1988 the Scottish figurative expressionist painter John Bellany was given a liver transplant by the pioneering surgeon Sir Roy Calne. “When he came to afterwards,” Calne later remembered, “he asked not for analgesics, but for paper and paint.”
Bellany had had liver disease for years, despite giving up alcohol in 1985, and his brush with death – and new lease of life – galvanised his art practice, enabling him to ‘see colours he hadn’t seen before’.
In the flesh | Marina Abramović at the RA
What do Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgois, Barbara Hepworth, Georgia O’Keeffe, Berthe Morisot, Helen Frankenthaler, Bridget Riley, Tracey Emin, Leonora Carrington, Tamara de Lempicka, Angelica Kauffman, Artemisia Gentileschi, Yoko Ono, Gwen John, Yayoi Kusuma, Sarah Lucas, Cornelia Parker and Cindy Sherman have in common?
None of them have been given a solo exhibition in the main galleries of the Royal Academy, that’s what. In fact, NO woman has ever been given that honour in the 255-year history of Britain’s most prestigious venue.
Until now, that is.
Take a bow Marina Abramović…
Pure Colour | Robert Bevan at Harry Moore-Gwyn
From his work being described as ‘violent’ and ‘garish’ in 1905, to ‘the real pioneer of the English Modern School’ in 1926, Robert Bevan had a turbulent time winning over critics.
Being shown at British Art Fair by Harry Moore-Gwyn Fine Art, learn of the painters journey in our latest news piece.
Artfully insouciant | Sandra Blow, at Jenna Burlingham
In 1947 the 22-year-old St Martins and RA graduate Sandra Blow, daughter of a fruit wholesaler, embarked on a tour of Italy on a motorcycle, studying pre-Renaissance architecture and frescoes, and enrolling in the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome…
Less hairy | Eric Ravilious, at the Fine Art Society
Soon after WW2 broke out in 1939, the watercolourist and commercial illustrator Eric Ravilious applied to become an official war artist, and this application – to his great delight – was accepted in January 1940.
In the spring of 1941, he was commissioned to depict the newly developed control rooms. From this space the Ministry of Home Security organised air raid precautions and collated bomb damage. This painting – fresh to market having been bought from a private collection by the Fine Art Society – is from that series. Fire Control Room will be shown by The Fine Art Society at British Art Fair 2023.
Curse Lifter | Tim Shaw at SOLO CONTEMPORARY
The Belfast-born sculptor Tim Shaw has had a good 2023. From works in the Summer Exhibition at the RA , to his piece, Man on Fire, being unveiled in July of this year outside the Imperial War Museum North, to being chosen by the Fiumano Clase Gallery as the artist they are exhibiting in the second edition of SOLO CONTEMPORARY…
Anything went | Fashionable anti-fashion at Charleston’s new gallery
The economist John Maynard Keynes sits in the garden of Charleston Farmhouse in the summer of 1917, painted by his host, friend and former lover Duncan Grant. The painting is in the collection of the Charleston Trust, and is in the inaugural exhibition in their new gallery in Lewes, East Sussex, which opened with a sumptuous private view this week.
Not to her face | Tracey Emin at The Conran Shop
Tracey Emin has never been shy about putting herself at the centre of her art. In her early career, this reflected a provocative, feisty personality, though it would be short-sighted to dismiss Emin as a mere provocateur. She has, over the years, demonstrated her prodigious talent in many mediums, including installation, sculpture, painting, printing, textiles, photography, film and neon.
Several examples of Emin’s prints will be on display during British Art Fair (and until October 9) on the ground floor of The Conran Shop’s new flagship store in Sloane Square, to mark a partnership with the Fair. The prints have been chosen by the Conran group from the collection of Chelsea gallerist Tanya Baxter.
Throw yourself in! | David Bomberg at Crossing Borders
Before WW1, Slade drop-out David Bomberg made his name as a radical, avant-garde artist, creating complex, geometric compositions, blending elements of cubism and futurism. Without Bomberg we wouldn’t have had Auerbach or Kossoff.
Bomberg’s work, Calle de San Pedro, courtesy of Osborne Samuel Gallery, can be seen at the Crossing Borders exhibition on the second floor of Saatchi Gallery during British Art Fair.
Behind those cave-like curtains | Gwen John’s La Petite Négresse, at Christopher Kingzett
The current retrospective of the work of Gwen John, at Pallant House Gallery until October 8, attempts to dispel the widespread notion that John was something of a recluse. There’s no doubting the sublime, beguiling quality of the work but a whole room of austere limited-palette nun portraits hardly tells a convincing story of Gwen John living the high life in Montmartre. However, a different side to the reclusive artists work is revealed through love letters and gifts to the subject of her fixation- a Russian-Jewish emigrée named Vera Oumançoff…
Neither Eve nor Mary | Judith and Holofernes, by Marcelle Hanselaar
This rather gruesome etching is part of a series of works by the London-based Dutch artist Marcelle Hanselaar, titled Apocrypha. Hanselaar’s etching is titled Vindication: Judith and Holofernes, and it depicts a scene from one such tale, the Book of Judith…
Painting for company | St Ives primitivist Alfred Wallis
The ‘discovery’ of the naïve Cornish painter Alfred Wallis is a well-known tale, but the story of his sad demise, in 1942, is less commonly related. Wallis didn’t start painting until he was 70…
Gifted with synaesthesia | Margaret Mellis at Redfern
Happy birthday to the Redfern Gallery, who are celebrating their 100th anniversary with two consecutive centenary exhibitions of paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures. The first is currently on show in their Cork Street space, where the gallery has been based since 1936 (having moved from Redfern House in Old Bond Street, hence the name).
Bloomsbury-on-Mediterrané | FCB Cadell in Cassis
FCB Cadell (pronounced to rhyme with ‘Paddle’) is often referred to as the ‘most Scottish’ of the four Scottish colourists, as much of his work depicted the interior of his sumptuous studio at Ainslie Place in the Georgian New Town of Edinburgh, or the landscape of the Inner Hebridean island of Iona, where he used to spend every summer. He often sported a kilt, in the Campbell tartan, albeit set off with a yellow waistcoat…
Ping-pong king | Henry Moore anniversary
Happy 125th birthday Henry Moore, sculptor, draftsman… and accomplished ping-pong player.
Moore was born on July 30 1898, in Castleford, Yorkshire. His father worked at the local pit, but was determined his seven children should pursue different careers, and Moore decided to become a sculptor at the age of 11. Art was not his only passion, however. He was also a table-tennis enthusiast…