David Bomberg, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal

David Bomberg

Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal 

17 July - 28 October 2006

Abbot Hall Art Gallery presents an exhibition of one of the most important and influential British painters of the twentieth century, DAVID BOMBERG (1890-1957).

David Bomberg is now recognised as a significant painter of the modern movement in British art, and yet at the time of his death in 1957 his work was almost universally ignored and neglected by critics and collectors alike. 

After a precocious period at the Slade School of Art from 1911-13, at the age of twenty three David Bomberg exploded onto the London art scene with his own daring, dynamic and innovative brand of ‘Vorticist’ painting, inspired by the machine-age and the modern industrial city. David Bomberg developed a unique visual language in which the human figure was reduced to angular, geometric shapes, taking the faceted forms of Cubist painting to new extremes, in order to express the dynamism of modern urban life.

However, David Bomberg’s enthusiasm for the revitalising energy of the modern industrial world was shattered by the horrors of the First World War when, in 1916, he was called to active service in France and experienced at first hand the devastation wrought by the new weapons of the machine-age. On his return to England he abandoned his radical early style, returning to more traditional figurative concerns and working from nature and ‘the life’. Moving away from the schematised abstraction of his pre-war work, he sought a more human approach and, in the years that followed his demobilisation in 1919, he strove to find a new visual language which satisfied his desire for greater naturalism, without sacrificing the qualities of simplicity and strong design so clearly demonstrated in his early work.

His turning point came in 1923 when he travelled to Palestine with his wife Alice, settling in Jerusalem where they lived until 1927. Embarking on a series of landscapes painted plein air, David Bomberg began to approach subjects with a precise and meticulous study of nature that had been engendered in him by his Slade training. Landscape painting would dominate David Bomberg’s output for the remainder of his career, and these works reveal his intense observation of nature as well as his passionate and brilliant handling of paint.

The exhibition at Abbot Hall focuses on the extraordinary variety, innovation and ability of David Bomberg as a painter and draughtsman, showing a selection of his finest works from throughout his career. Little of his work has been seen in public galleries as many of his finest paintings are in private hands, however, we will be borrowing ten key works from Tate, and many of the paintings are 3on loan from individuals, in addition to other major public collections. 

A fully illustrated exhibition catalogue is available.

HABBOT HALL ART GALLERY

Kendal, Cumbria LA9 5AL

www.abothhall.org.uk

David Bomberg & Peter Lanyon, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London

David Bomberg & Peter Lanyon
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
3 - 27 May 2000

To celebrate the launch of the first major monograph on Peter Lanyon written by Professor Chris Stephens, a curator at the Tate Gallery, published by 21publishing, the Bernard Jacobson Gallery is exhibiting work by David Bomberg and Peter Lanyon. This exhibition features two of the greatest British landscape painters of the twentieth century. Their style and approach to landscape painting were very different, but they are united by an intensity of vision and purpose in their work and in their teaching and the influence this had on the artists who knew them and their work.

DAVID BOMBERG, once a radical modernist linked to the Vorticist group of the early teens, severed all links with what he considered a bourgeois and pretentious bunch in the early twenties and left England for Palestine where he started to paint in a topographical landscape idiom. From this new beginning David Bomberg developed his mature style. Taking a cue from Cezanne his painting became more and more about trying to get down on canvas the power and awesome beauty of the landscape of central and southern Spain where he now found himself. The work became more and more expressionistic as he tried to find what he called “the spirit in the mass”. His travels led him to Cyprus and later on in his life he returned to Ronda where he had spent perhaps his most fruitful time in the 1930’s. Time spent away from England was interspersed with less happy times back in London. It was here though that his influence was felt. He was a great teacher and through his teaching at the Borough polytechnic inspired many young artists, among them Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. Beyond his immediate group, his influence can be seen in the work of Lucien Freud, and Euan Uglow.

David Bomberg died in 1957 tragically unrecognised by the Art establishment, despite the importance of his position to the future of British art.

PETER LANYON was a native of St Ives and a true Cornishman, this however did not stop him becoming perhaps the most internationally minded of his generation of British painters. He started his career as a pupil of Ben Nicholson and his early work is very reminiscent of his teacher. But after a major falling out Peter Lanyon rejected Nicholson and started to make paintings which were very much his own. He was in love with the Cornish landscape but very aware of its sometime violent side. His paintings deal with the mythical as well as the physical aspects of the landscape which surrounded him. He seemed to want to immerse himself into it. As his development continued Peter Lanyon's work became more abstract and often would appear to be a view of the land from above. It was this interest that led Peter Lanyon to take up gliding. This allowed him to see for real what he had been painting and also to allow him to immerse himself in the landscape of the air. Peter Lanyon like David Bomberg spent a good deal of time in other countries including Italy, Czechoslovakia and, perhaps most importantly, America where he had a good deal of success and became friendly with the Abstract Expressionists. As a teacher Peter Lanyon too was influential. He taught Howard Hodgkin at the Corsham School of art. And by his links to American art influenced peoples like Richard Smith and Robyn Denny.

Peter Lanyon’s life was cut short at 46, when he died in a glider accident in 1964.

Thousand of artists have subsequently used elements of the work of David Bomberg or Peter Lanyon as a starting point for their own work, it was these two artists who in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s set the agenda for British landscape painting right up to the end of the 20th Century and beyond.

BERNARD JACOBSON GALLERY
14A Clifford Street, London W1X 1RF
www.jacobsongallery.co.uk