Contemporary British Printmaking 1967 - 2017 by Jonathan Grant Gallery

Contemporary British Printmaking 1967 - 2017

Contemporary British Printmaking 1967 - 2017 27th Novemember - 16th December 2018

All works are available for sale upon receipt of this catalogue. The entire exhibition can be viewed at www.jgg.co.nz

Jonathan Grant Galleries 280 Parnell Rd Parnell Auckland New Zealand Ph: +64 9 308 9125 Email: jg@jgg.co.nz www.jgg.co.nz

Illustratred cover (Detail): Patrick Caulfield Arita Flask Black Screenprint on wove paper 107 x 81 cm Signed, Ed. 2/45 Published by Waddington Graphics, London 1990 3

Contemporary British Printmaking 1967 - 2017 Text by Richard Wolfe This selection of 28 prints - and two ceramic plates â&#x20AC;&#x201C; was produced by 13 British artists in the period 1967-2017. The artists, who include such well-known names as Patrick Caulfield, Howard Hodgkin and Allen Jones, span the twentieth century, beginning with Stanley Hayter (born 1902), Barbara Hepworth and John Piper (both born 1903), while the youngest represented here are Charles Uzzell-Edwards (aka Pure Evil, born 1968) and Jacob Love (born 1980). While many of these artists are primarily known as painters, all have also adopted printmaking as a further medium for personal expression. Their approaches to printmaking are as diverse as their own backgrounds; John Piper served as an official war artist during WW2, and Terry Frost who, like Barbara Hepworth, was associated with the St Ives group of artists, began his painting career whilst a prisoner of war. Among the younger generation, Patrick Caulfield and Allen Jones studied at the Royal College - along with David Hockney - and several came to prominence following their inclusion in the prestigious Young Contemporaries exhibitions in the 1960s. A notable exception among these painters is sculptor Barbara Hepworth, represented by her 1970 sculpturally-themed screenprint, Three Forms. Bruce McLean also began his career as a sculpture student, later becoming a conceptual artist and exploring a wide range of media, including printmaking. Stylistically, these prints range from Pop art to abstraction and personal expressionism. At the Pop end of the spectrum, Allen Jonesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Woman Splash (Kneeling Woman) shows his early interest in imagery sourced from pulp magazines, while Pure Evil, who began as a street and graffiti artist, is represented by the Andy Warhol-influenced Enjoy Coke Sharon Tate. Patrick Caulfield, who always resisted being categorised as a Pop artist, was nonetheless a master of reducing subjects to the barest of essentials, as seen in his suite of 8 simple vase forms, caught between their light sources and shadows.

As ably demonstrated here, screenprinting is an ideal means of laying down areas of solid colour. Among those who have explored its potential are Patrick Heron and Albert Irvin whose prints – and paintings – are distinguished by bold sweeps and interacting areas of colour. Hardly surprisingly, the majority of the prints in this collection were screenprinted, and in some instances they received additional treatment. For example, Terry Frost’s Blue, Red, Black Vertical Rhythm is a screenprint with mixed media, while Albert Irvin’s dynamic compositions have calligraphic elements added by means of woodblock printing. Two artists who employed alternative process altogether are Howard Hodgkin (soft-ground etching and individual hand colouring in watercolour) and Allen Jones (lithography).

Patrick Caulfield, Ipanema, Glazed Lithograph on Bone China

William Tillyer works in various media and, as indicated by both the title and his use of primary colours, his woodcut with printed collage, Living by the Esk – De Stijl, acknowledges the early twentieth-century Dutch artists group. Yet another approach is shown by Jacob Love, who used modern inkjet printing for his Blue P6MA Press. Also included here is the highly influential Stanley Hayter, who was central to the revival of printmaking in the twentieth century. He is represented by four screenprints which illustrate his ongoing exploration of the possibilities of colour and pattern, while his arrangements of curving and intersecting lines create additional areas of optical interest. One of the few representational images in this selection is John Piper’s atmospherically charged Cascade Bridge, Halswell, typical of his romantic approach to interpreting the English landscape. And complementing these 28 prints are two bone china plates, by Patrick Caulfield (Ipanema) and Bruce McLean (Passed the Tangerine Test), both demonstrating those artists’ mastery of simple forms. 5

Stanley William Hayter (b.1901 - 1988)

S. W. (Stanley William) Hayter was born in Hackney, London, the son of a painter. After receiving a degree in chemistry and geology from King’s College London, he worked in Iran for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. After returning home in 1925 he held a successful exhibition of the paintings and drawings he had produced while overseas, and this is likely to have convinced him to pursue a career as an artist. In 1926, Hayter went to Paris, studying briefly at the Académie Julian. He was introduced to copper engraving using the traditional burin technique, and in 1927 he opened the studio which would become internationally known as Atelier 17. The studio was attended by many distinguished artists – including Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko - and Hayter became one of the most important figures in the 20th-century revival of the print as an independent art form. Hayter was a prolific printmaker, completing more than 400 works in the medium before his death. His etchings were influenced by the abstract aspects of Surrealism, and notable for their experimentation with texture and colour. He was equally active as a painter, and also wrote two influential books, New Ways of Gravure (1949) and About Prints (1962). In 1951 Hayter was appointed an OBE, Officer of the Order of the British Empire (elevated to a CBE, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, in 1968), while the French Government awarded him the Légion d’honneur. In 1958 Hayter was Great Britain’s representative artist at the Venice Biennale.

Aquarius Suite II

Aquarius Suite I

Signed, Ed. xx/xxx, 1970

Silkscreen 71 x 59.4 cm

Barbara Hepworth (1903 - 1975)

Dame Barbara Hepworth was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, and studied at the Leeds School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. At both schools she studied alongside fellow Yorkshire-born artist Henry Moore. Both became leading practitioners of the direct carving method, working on the chosen material as opposed to making preparatory models and maquettes. Although concerned with form and abstraction, Hepworth’s art was primarily about relationships, between the human figure and the landscape. From 1924 Hepworth spent two years in Italy, and from 1925 until 1931 was married to sculptor John Skeaping. In 1932 she began living and working closely with painter Ben Nicholson. The pair travelled throughout Europe, visiting the studios of Picasso, Brancusi and Arp which had a profound influence on the development of Hepworth’s career. Hepworth and Nicholson became key figures in a network of abstract artists, and when war broke out in 1939 they moved to St Ives. They became a hub for a generation of younger emerging British artists, among them Terry Frost, who was Hepworth’s studio assistant in 1951. For these artists, the wild beauty of the Cornish landscape offered a respite from the disruption and destruction of the previous war. By the 1950s Hepworth was an internationally recognized sculptor, representing Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1950 and winning first prize at the São Paulo Bienal in 1959. Today, her studio and sculpture garden are one of St Ives’ most popular attractions, while the Hepworth Wakefield, in her home town, holds a rich archive of her work.

Three Forms

Colour Screenprint 77.5 x 58 cm

Signed and dated 1970

John Piper (1903 - 1992)

John Piper was born in Epsom, England, and educated at Epsom College, the Richmond School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. He was a painter, printmaker and designer, whose work often focused on the British landscape, especially churches and monuments. Some of his most memorable works were done as an official war artist during World War II when he recorded bomb-damaged buildings. His design work included tapestries, fabrics, ceramics, stained-glass windows and both opera and theatre sets, while he also undertook photography and screen-printing. In the late 1930s Piper was one of the leading British abstract artists, before turning away from nonrepresentational art to naturalism. He then concentrated on landscape and architectural subjects in an emotionally charged style that was a continuation of the nineteenth-century English Romantic tradition. A stormy atmosphere pervaded his well-known views of country houses, while his image of Coventry Cathedral made him a household name, and led to his work being acquired by several public collections. As a writer Piper is probably best known for his 1942 book, British Romantic Artists. And in collaboration with poet John Betjeman he edited the illustrated Shell Guides to four English counties. In his later years Piper produced many limited-edition prints, one such series being ‘Eye and Camera’, which he began in 1967. For these prints, which are distinctly different from his topographical work, Piper used fragmented and collaged photographic images, which were juxtaposed with drawing. John Piper is well represented in the collection of the Tate – with 183 works.

Eye and Camera, Red, Blue,Yellow Screenprint on Grand Vélin Arches Paper 59 x 75 cm

Signed, Ed. of 150 Published by Kelpra Editions 1980 Illustrated: The Tate Gallery 1980-82: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1984

Cascade Bridge, Halswell Screenprint on wove paper 64.8 x 85.4 cm

Signed, Ed. 39/70 Published by Marlborough Fine Art, London 1987

Spirals

Screenprint 55 x 58 cm

Signed Provenance: The Mall Galleries Illustratred: Kemp, Terry Frost Catalogue RĂŠsonne, no.256

Terry Frost (1915 - 2003)

Sir Terry Frost was born in Leamington Spa, England. He started painting in 1943 when a prisoner of war, and then studied under Victor Pasmore at the Camberwell School of Art in London (1947-50). At Camberwell he came into contact with the work of the St Ives artists Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Peter Lanyon and Roger Hilton who, among others, influenced the development of his own abstract style. Frost believed that painting and printmaking were inseparable, and that each medium informed the other. Prints were therefore an essential element of his oeuvre, which encompassed etching, linocut, woodcut and drypoint etching, while bold colours and simplified geometric forms distinguished both his paintings and prints. Frost held his first solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in London in 1952. Subsequent exhibitions included the Arts Council Touring Exhibition, 1976; and Waddington Galleries, London, 1961. He exhibited regularly in London, and in 1961 celebrated his first solo show abroad at the Bertha Schaeffer Gallery in New York. His group exhibitions include the 1980 Hayward Annual, Hayward Gallery, London; Here and Now, Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995; 30th Anniversary Exhibition, Angela Flowers Gallery, London and Santa Monica, 2000. Frostâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work is held in the collections of the British Museum, Tate Gallery and Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the National Gallery of Canada and the National Gallery of New South Wales, Australia.

Blue, Red, Black Vertical Rhytm

Screenprint & mixed media 53 x 55 cm

Signed Provenance: The Mall Galleries

Untitled, 1970 Screenprint 77.5 x 59 cm

Signed, Ed. 38/100

Patrick Heron (1920 - 1999)

Patrick Heron was born in Headingley, Leeds, Yorkshire. In 1933, following a visit to the National Gallery in London, he began to paint under the influence of Paul CĂŠzanne. From 1937 to 1939 he was a part-time student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He later worked as an assistant at Bernard Leachâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pottery in St Ives, and as art critic for the New English Weekly. He had his first one-man exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in London, in 1947. His early work was largely figurative, with a colour sense influenced by Georges Braque and Henri Matisse. After seeing an exhibition of American Abstract Expressionism at the Tate Gallery in 1956, Heron turned to abstraction, developing a style distinguished by the intense interaction of colour. His work was devoted to the analysis of natural forms, and the use of colour to express the pleasure human sense of sight. In addition to painting Heron undertook tapestry design, and designed a stained glass window for the Tate Gallery in St. Ives. He had major solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1968), Whitechapel Art Gallery (1972), Bonython Art Gallery, Sydney (1973), Barbican Art Galley, London (1985), Art Gallery of New South Wales (1990), Tate Britain (1998) and Tate St Ives (2018). His work is in the collection of the Arts Council of Great Britain, British Council, British Museum, Manchester City Art Gallery, Tate Gallery and Victoria & Albert Museum, and some 17 collections in North America including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Albert Irvin (1922 - 2015)

Albert Irwin was born in Bermondsey, south-east London. He studied at the Northampton School of Art between 1940 and 1941, before being conscripted into the Royal Air Force as a navigator. On being demobbed he resumed his studies at Goldsmiths College (19461950), where he would later go on to teach (1962-1983). Irvin’s influences included Walter Sickert, Henri Matisse and JMW Turner, and he had his first solo show in Edinburgh, at the relatively advanced age of 38. He was an abstract expressionist painter who often worked on a grand scale, and his work became increasingly vibrant with age, reflecting his affirmative view of life and art. His paintings were distinguished by sweeps of colour, giving the illusion of depth, and the inclusion of dynamic marks and gestures produced by the handheld brush. He also used a large squeegee to push solid bars of colour across his canvases. In 1980 Irvin began screenprinting, a medium which allowed him to develop his characteristic style, and establish himself as one of Britain’s leading printmakers. Irvin’s work was widely shown in the UK and internationally, by the Arts Council of Great Britain, and at the Birmingham City Art Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, London, Contemporary Art Society, Manchester City Art Gallery, Tate Britain, Victoria and Albert Museum and Warwick University Arts Centre, and in significant exhibitions in Ireland and Australia. In 1975 Irvin won a major Arts Council Award, and a Gulbenkian Award for printmaking in 1983. He became an RA in 1998, and was appointed OBE in 2013 for services to the visual arts.

Montcada II

Screenprint on Wove Paper 86 x 70 cm

Signed, Ed. AP IV/X Published by Advanced Graphics, London 1995

Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connell

Screenprint with Woodblock on Wove Paper 59 x 75 cm Signed, Ed. 50/225 Published by Advanced Graphics, London 1995

Merrion

Screenprint with Woodblock on Wove Paper 59 x 78 cm Signed, Ed. 96/225 Published by Advanced Graphics, London 1966

Concordia II

Screenprint with Woodblock on Wove Paper 59 x 68 cm Signed, Ed. 62/195 Published by Advanced Graphics, London 1997

Concordia III

Screenprint with Woodblock on Wove Paper 52 x 68 cm Signed, Ed. 1997 Published by Advanced Graphics, London 1997

Patrick Caulfield (1936-2005)

Patrick Caulfield was born in Acton, West London. He studied at the Chelsea School of Art (1956-1960) and at the Royal College of Art (1960-3) where his contemporaries included David Hockney and Allen Jones. He subsequently taught at Chelsea School of Art (1963–71), and in 1964 was included in the New Generation exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, which resulted in him being associated with the Pop art movement. Caulfield was and remained opposed to this label, seeing himself rather as “a ‘formal’ artist”. In 2004 Caulfield was included in the touring Tate Britain exhibition Art & the 60s, which was shown at the Auckland Art Gallery. In the accompanying publication he was described as an artist ‘who cannot easily be categorised’, and one who typically presented ‘a banal motif in a flat, stylized and completely unsentimental manner’. His subjects were invariably reduced to their essential components, and depicted in a restricted palette of bold colours. White Ware Prints is a portfolio of eight screenprints published in an edition of 45, with 13 proofs of each image, by Waddington Graphics, London. The subject of each print is a single white ceramic pot set against a dark background. Caulfield explained that the inspiration for this series came from the Victoria & Albert Museum, in particular its published catalogues of oriental ceramics. The colour of the background varies from print to print, while there are accents of other, brighter hues, and an dominant part of the composition in several prints is a strong source of light emanating from top right.

Arita Flask Black

Screenprint on Wove Paper 107 x 81 cm