Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. Some light marking plates bright. Softcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> Ben Nicholson has long been recognised as the leading figure in British Modernism before the Second World War. It is an accolade he himself would have recognised and no doubt have accepted. If there is one Nicholson is the hero of Charles Harrison’s landmark book English Anand Modernum 1900-ryzy. This reputation rests on the philosophy underlying his work of that time bis poution among an international network of modern artists including the leading figure of Piet Mondrian and in terms of his work primarily on his white reliefs. The white relhets first produced in 1934 and continued into the 1942s represent the high point in an evolutionary progress into abstraction the abandonment of subject matter besng followed by the abandonment of colour The emphasis placed on certain aspects of Nicholson’s carver by art historians and critics is exemplified by the way his work has been exhibited in Britain. The title of the 198; exhibition Ben Nicholson: The Years of Experiment 1919-19 summarises the construction of this heroic progress towards a Modernist purity. Nicholson’s major retrospectives at the Tate Gallery-in 1969 and 1993-emphasised his pre-war work and the abstract reliefs he made in Switzerland from 1958. To address the question statistically in the 1969 show selected by Harrison and the artist there were sixty-five works up to 1939 thirty-six after 1918 and only twenty-five from the two decades between. Similarly Jeremy Lewison has said that in his selection for the 1993 retrospective he consciously focused on the early work and the Swiss reliefs. (LL)