BRITISH ARTISTS AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR Conscience and Conflict
Simon Martin on how the Spanish Civil War inspired a generation of British artists Remaking Picasso’s Guernica Megha Rajguru on making a collaborative anti-war banner Terry Frost: The Language of Freedom Katy Norris considers an artistic response to Federico García Lorca’s poetry Alice Kettle: Odyssey Sara Roberts explores narrative in the artist’s textiles
£2 Number 34 November 2014 – February 2015 www.pallant.org.uk
Modern & Post-War British art london 18–19 november 2014
Sir Stanley Spencer r.a. Greenhouse Interior, circa 1935. estimate £180,000–250,000 enquiries modbrit@sothebys.com +44 (0)20 7293 5519 34–35 new Bond Street, london W1a 2aa register now at sothebys.com
Barry McGlashan — The Burning Heart. One thousand years in the studio.
John Martin Gallery 38 Albemarle Street London, W1S 4 JG
T +44 (0)20 7499 1314 info@jmlondon.com
catalogue available
28 November – 20 December
www.jmlondon.com
Anxiety oil on canvas, 38 x 48 inches
Contents Features 20 28 30 34 38 40 42 Wyndham Lewis, The Surrender of Barcelona, 1934–7 , Oil on canvas, Tate: purchased 1947 Š Estate of Mrs G. A Wyndham Lewis by permission of the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust (a registered charity)
You can find full details of our latest events programme in the What's On guide. The latest news, exhibitions and events can be found online at www.pallant.org.uk You can also follow us at .com/pallantgallery .com/pallantgallery
Conscience and Conflict Simon Martin Remaking Picasso's Guernica Terry Frost: The Language of Freedom Katy Norris Angry Young Men Andrew Graham-Dixon Art of the Community Sandra Peaty Outside In: Toovey's Auction Marc Steene Alice Kettle: Odyssey Sara Roberts
Friends 48 49
Chairman's Letter Friends' Events
Regulars 7 11 17 53 58 60
Co-Directors' Letter Exhibitions Diary Gallery News What's On: Events Bookshop Artwork in Focus
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Contributors
With thanks
EDITORIAL Editor Anna Zeuner, a.zeuner@pallant.org.uk Sub Editor Beth Funnell Gallery Editorial Elaine Bentley, Katy Norris, Sarah Norris, Simon Martin, Sandra Peaty, Marc Steene Guest Editorial Andrew Graham-Dixon, Alice Kettle, Megha Rajguru, Sara Roberts Friends' Editorial Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Mary Ambrose Design, Editing and Production David Wynn
CONSCIENCE AND CONFLICT: BRITISH ARTISTS AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR SUPPORTERS
ADVERTISING Booking and General Enquiries Paolo Russo +44 (0)207 300 5751 Emily Knowles +44 (0)207 300 5662
With generous support from the Conscience and Conflict Supporters’ Circle
GALLERY INFORMATION Pallant House Gallery, 9 North Pallant, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 1TJ, UK +44 (0)1243 774557, info@pallant.org.uk www.pallant.org.uk OPENING TIMES Monday Closed Tuesday–Saturday 10am–5pm Thursday 10am–8pm Sunday/Bank Holidays 11am–5pm FRIENDS' OFFICE Events +44 (0)1243 770816 friendsevents@pallant.org.uk Membership +44 (0)1243 770815 friends@pallant.org.uk
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Elephant Trust Friends of Pallant House Gallery Henry Moore Foundation Idlewild Trust International Brigade Memorial Trust Kirker Holidays The Mayor Gallery
BRITISH SELF-PORTRAITS: HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE RUTH BORCHARD COLLECTION Supported by Piano Nobile GALLERY SUPPORTERS Headline Sponsor of the Gallery 2014
PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY Friends
BOOKSHOP www.pallantbookshop.com shop@pallantbookshop.com +44 (0)1243 781293
Willard Conservation Limited, The Priory and Poling Charitable Trusts, The Garfield Weston Foundation, and other Trusts, Foundations and anonymous benefactors. Pallant House Gallery makes every effort to seek permission of copyright owners for images reproduced in this publication. If however, a work has not been correctly identified or credited and you are the copyright holder, or know of the copyright holder, please contact the editor.
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TOOVEY’S
Auctioned in our May sale of silverware ~ a James II footed salver by Benjamin Yate, London 1688, sold to a specialist in New York for ÂŁ30,000
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CO-DIRECTORS' LETTER
Simon Martin and Marc Steene. Photograph by Jason Hedges
Whilst much attention has been given to the Centenary of the First World War this year, including our own exhibition of Stanley Spencer’s moving paintings from the Sandham Memorial Chapel, this autumn our programme casts light on the often-overlooked conflict that followed: the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Whilst Britain was not officially involved, the issues raised by the conflict touched the consciences of many British artists who created posters, paintings, banners, prints and sculptures to express their opposition to Fascism (and occasionally their support of General Franco). Marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the conflict, our main exhibition ‘Conscience & Conflict: British Artists and the Spanish Civil War’ is the first to explore the fascinating subject of how British artists engaged with the war, from the Bloomsbury Group to the Surrealists. We are delighted to be able to include Picasso’s iconic Weeping Woman (1937) in the exhibition, on loan from Tate. Expanding on the theme, in the De’Longhi Print Room we present the artist Terry Frost’s bold suite of abstract etchings inspired by the poetry of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, who was killed early in the Spanish Civil War. In the Garden Gallery we are displaying a textile banner of Guernica that has been sewn by community action groups including Amnesty International and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Developing this textile theme within the programme, in the stairwell of the Queen Anne townhouse we present contemporary stitched wall hangings by the artist Alice Kettle, inspired by the archetypal narrative of Homer’s Odyssey. These are the latest in a series
of contemporary interventions in this atmospheric space and reference the tradition of tapestries on classical themes that hung in the grand interiors of country houses. Meanwhile, the house features several new thematic collection displays including a group of Spanish landscapes and an exhibition of highlights from the remarkable Ruth Borchard Collection of British self-portraits, which recalls the domestic presentation of the collection in her home. In January 2015 Pallant House Gallery will be the official museum partner of the London Art Fair, where we will be showing key works from our collection with a unique exhibition ‘The Figure in Modern British Art’. Following the successful exhibition ‘The Inner Self: Drawings from the Subconcious’ at CGP London we are delighted that our flagship project Outside In is being showcased at the European Outsider Art Fair in Paris in October 2014. It is an exciting opportunity to share and promote Outside In on an international platform alongside some of the most significant European galleries in this field. Finally, we are pleased that the Gallery had been maintained as a National Portfolio Organisation with the Arts Council continuing to fund aspects of our community and contemporary programmes from 2015 to 2018. Even so, we are dependent on our friends and supporters to realise our ambitious programmes and are hugely grateful to all our sponsors and supporters for their continuing support. Simon Martin, Artistic Director and Marc Steene, Executive Director 7
A very different collection of photographs gathered by Paul Arden
The Paul Arden Gallery om om r.c er.c e th uth tru str s an an 06 and and 2 x 5 en en h gh se 86 ard ard ns am ort rou Sus 1JR a 8 . w ym dh tle lbo est 20 179 ww fo@ 0 w in Da Be Fit Pu W RH
De'Longhi holds exclusive preview at Pallant House Gallery Visitors to Pallant House Gallery enjoy advanced viewing of artworks ahead of charity art programme at Darren Baker Gallery
Enjoying its sixth year of sponsorship of Pallant House Gallery, De’Longhi – the UK’s number one Italian coffee machine brand – is delighted to be hosting the eighth annual Macmillan De’Longhi Arts Programme, which will take place at the Darren Baker Gallery in Soho, London from 21st to 27th October. Over 20 high profile pieces will be showcased at the seven-day gallery exhibition, and members of the public will be able to view and bid on their favourite pieces, both at the gallery and online at www. macmillan.org.uk/artauction from early October. The exhibition will culminate in an invite-only VIP event on Monday 27th October.
Visitors to Pallant House Gallery in September were lucky enough to enjoy a sneak preview of a selection of the artworks that have been donated to this year’s auction by artists including Idris Khan and Gordon Cheung. For more information, or to request an invitation to the VIP event at the Darren Baker Gallery, please email Macmillan at artauction@macmillan.org.uk or Clarion Communications at clarion.delonghi@clarioncomms.co.uk. The Macmillan De’Longhi Arts Programme 2014 is now well on the way to raising its target amount of £1million and every penny raised this year will help fund the Macmillan Support Line. Stuart Semple, One of These Mornings, 2014, Digital print, acrylic, India ink, vinyl, tip-ex, oil pastel & stickers on Hahnemuhle German Etching paper, 76 x 56cm Gordon Cheung, Unnamed Tulip 21 (Tulipbook), 2013, Financial newspaper stock market listings, acrylic on canvas, 50.5 x 40.5cm
Zimmer Stewart Gallery Exhibiting Contemporary Art info@zimmerstewart.co.uk 01903 882063 29 Tarrant Street, Arundel West Sussex, BN18 9DG
Contemporary Paintings, Ceramics, Sculpure & Original prints in Arundel Terry Frost Federico Garcia Lorca 1976
Nick Carrick Wonderland
Andrea Schulewitz Climate I
Alan Franklin Sixty Four #64
Emily Morey London Starts
Ilona Szalay Float
Zimmer Stewart Gallery & the Project Gallery
Matt Bodimeade Hamiltons
Exhibition Diary Autumn 2014
3rd - 25th October Zimmer Stewart Gallery - Andrea Schulewitz The C-Word Project Gallery - Nick Carrick & Ilona Szalay Terra Incognita 31 Oct - 22 November Zimmer Stewart Gallery - Matt Bodimeade Stick in the Mud Project Gallery - Emily Morey As I stumbled across 28 November to 24 December Zimmer Stewart Gallery - A Mixed Christmas Exhibition Project Gallery - Alain Franklin Aggregations Paintings, collages and prints by Sir Terry Frost, RA, are available throughout the Autumn
Arundel is the town collectors come to view and buy contemporary art in West Sussex Both galleries are open 10am-5pm Tues-Sat, occasional Sundays and by appointment www.zimmerstewart.co.uk www.theprojectgallery.co.uk
Project Gallery
Exhibiting Contemporary Art curator@theprojectgallery.co.uk 01903 884753 63 High Street, Arundel West Sussex BN18 9AJ
EXHIBITIONS DIARY CONSCIENCE AND CONFLICT: BRITISH ARTISTS AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 8 NOVEMBER 2014 – 15 FEBRUARY 2015 The Spanish Civil War (1936–39) was one of the most significant European conflicts of the twentieth century, uniting a generation of young writers, poets and artists in the fight against Fascism in the years leading to World War II. The artistic response crossed aesthetic boundaries between abstract and realist art. Timed to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the conflict, this is the first major exhibition to examine the response of British visual artists such as Edward Burra, Wyndham Lewis, Henry Moore and John Armstrong in conjunction with the work of the Spanish artists who influenced them, including Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. A highlight of the show will be Picasso’s Weeping Woman (1937), which will be on display alongside material detailing the impact in Britain of the exhibition of Picasso’s iconic Guernica, which travelled to the UK in 1938. Main Galleries 12-17
John Armstrong, The Empty Street, 1938, Tempera on panel, Private Collection © Artist's Estate / Bridgeman Images
Cecil Collins, Self-Portrait, 1949, Pen and ink and brush on paper, Private collection courtesy of Robert Travers, Piano Nobile Works of Art, London © The Estate of Cecil Collins
BRITISH SELF-PORTRAITS: HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE RUTH BORCHARD COLLECTION 18 OCTOBER 2014 – 31 MAY 2015 Writer Ruth Borchard’s significant collection of selfportraits by British artists provides a fascinating overview of 20th Century British art. It focuses on portraits by both emerging and established artists including Michael Ayrton, Ithell Colquhoun, Jean Cooke, Peter Phillips and David Tindle, tracing the development of modern British art through Neo-Romanticism, the Euston Road School, the London Group and the Pop Art movement. The display in the Gallery’s Queen Anne townhouse is the first time that the portraits have been seen publically in a domestic setting since their original presentation in the Borchards’ home in Reigate, Surrey. Supported by Piano Nobile. Galleries 3 and 4 TERRY FROST: ELEVEN POEMS BY FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA 29 OCTOBER 2014 – 15 FEBRUARY 2015 Created five decades after Spanish writer Federico García Lorca was murdered by pro-Franco militias in Granada in 1936, British abstract artist Terry Frost’s print portfolio Eleven Poems by Federico Garcia Lorca (1989) was inspired by Lorca’s most significant works, including Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (1935). Frost’s etchings are presented alongside Lorca’s corresponding poems, exploring their shared fascination with nature, death and the ‘Duende’, a concept in Spanish culture referring to the heightened state of emotion required for artistic invention. De’Longhi Print Room
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ALICE KETTLE: ODYSSEY 18 OCTOBER 2014 – MAY 2015 An installation of two stitched wall-hangings in the stairwell of the Queen Anne townhouse by Alice Kettle (b.1961), one of Britain’s leading textile artists. Whilst recalling the tradition of huge figurative tapestries in historic houses, these works use stitch in a contemporary manner as a gesture to create painterly effects with rich surface textures. The two works draw upon Homer’s enduring epic narrative poem The Odyssey, following the journey of Odysseus home to Ithaca after the Trojan Wars. Three other works by Alice Kettle will be displayed in Gallery 2. Stairwell and Gallery 2 REMAKING PICASSO’S GUERNICA 8 NOVEMBER 2014 TO 15 FEBRUARY 2015 Since June 2013, a collective of artists and activists has worked to recreate Picasso’s Guernica as a largescale textile banner, deploying the power of art against fascism and war whilst making comparisons between the mid-1930s (when Guernica was created) and today. Remaking Picasso’s Guernica is a collective project involving Amnesty International, Brighton Anti-Fascists, Gatwick Detainee Visitors Group, Migrant English Project, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, University of Brighton and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Garden Gallery EMILY YOUNG: FOUR HEADS UNTIL SPRING 2015 A group of stone heads by Emily Young (b.1951), widely acknowledged as Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor. Young carves directly into blocks of stone, to reveal human presences within whilst expressing the qualities of the material. Courtyard Garden NATIONAL OPEN ART COMPETITION 2 DECEMBER- 14 DECEMBER 2014 A display of the winning entries from The National Open Art Exhibition, now in its 18th year. From 3600 entries 29 works of fine art and photography were chosen by a panel including Norman Ackroyd RA, Chris Orr RA, Caroline Irby and Vanessa Branson. www.thenationalopenartcompetition.com Main Galleries 11
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EXHIBITIONS DIARY STUDIO EXHIBITIONS MICHELLE ROBERTS SOLO SHOW 30 SEPTEMBER - 26 OCTOBER 2014 The final Outside In: National Award Winner Michelle Roberts creates colourful and complex worlds in her works, each with a distinct logic and meaning that connect to her own life. THE WONDERS OF WOMEN: VIVIEN VAN DYK AND NICOLA HANCOCK 28 OCTOBER – 23 NOVEMBER 2014 Vivienne Van Dyk and Nicola Hancock have been in Partners in Art partnership for over six years. This is an exhibition of their joint and individual journeys celebrating the resourcefulness of women.
Nicola Hancock, Universal Constants Love
COMMUNITY PROGRAMME FUNDRAISING ART EXHIBITION 25 NOVEMBER 2014 – 1 FEBRUARY 2015 A vibrant and diverse array of artwork donated by members of the Community Programme will be on sale to raise funds for Partners in Art. SUSSEX ARTISTS AWARD WINNER 2013 3 FEBRUARY – 1 MARCH 2015 The biennual award champions the works of artists across the country and supports projects in the local community. 2013 first prize winner, Elspeth Ross, exhibits a selection of her work. Entries for Sussex Artists Award 2015 opens 2 February 2015 and closes 26 June 2015.
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GEORGE LESLIE HUNTER (SCOTTISH 1879-1931) STILL LIFE WITH PINK ROSES AND FRUIT Sold for £97,250
21—25 January 2015 Business Design Centre Islington, London N1 Book Tickets londonartfair.co.uk 2015 Museum partner, Pallant House Gallery, presents ‘The Figure in Modern British Art’
MARY FEDDEN A sale and loan exhibition 4 – 19 DECEMBER 2014 Catalogue Available Portland Gallery represents the Estate of Mary Fedden
PORTLAND GALLERY 8 BENNET STREET LONDON SW1A 1RP TELEPHONE 020 7493 1888 WWW.PORTLANDGALLERY.COM EMAIL: SIDONIE@PORTLANDGALLERY.COM
Masters of Modern architecture & design Explore the great design movements, practice and practitioners associated with the 20th-century. ‘I didn’t want it to end… Can I become a lifetime student and keep doing your courses over and over again?’
Find out more www.vam.ac.uk/courses Victoria and Albert Museum The Red Blue Chair, designed by Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, Dutch, made in the 1960s © Victoria and Albert Museum
GALLERY NEWS INTRODUCING THE PALLANT KITCHEN This autumn we are delighted to launch The Pallant Kitchen, our new café restaurant serving delicious, fresh and seasonal food. Housed within the awardwinning contemporary wing of the Gallery, in homage to the Queen Anne townhouse’s original 18th century kitchen, The Pallant Kitchen offers a range of modern British dishes with European influence. Using the very best produce from local suppliers, seasonal specials feature on a diverse menu alongside British classics, fresh creative salads, open sandwiches, and hearty and healthy soups. For the more indulgent, we have a tailored wine list as well as a selection of tempting cakes to accompany morning coffee or afternoon tea. Keep an eye out for special themed evenings and The Pallant Kitchen is also available for exclusive hire for evening events. Contact thekitchen@pallant.org.uk for bookings and enquiries. OUTSIDE IN TO SHOW AT EUROPEAN OUTSIDER ART FAIR 2014 Outside In, Pallant House Gallery’s pioneering project for those facing barriers to the art world, has been accepted into the European Outsider Art Fair in Paris, 23-26 October 2014. The Outsider Art Fair, founded in 1993 by Sandy Smith in New York, was the first art fair specific to outsider art. Today, under the ownership of Wide Open Arts, both the New York edition and the more recently conceived Paris event are lauded as critical and commercial successes, with top galleries representing work by both emerging and established artists and a passionate collecting community in attendance. Kindly supported by Jans and Charles Rolls, the Outside In exhibition will feature work by Jan Arden, Manuel Bonifacio, Kate Bradbury and Chaz Waldren. Since its inception at the Gallery in 2006, Outside In has provided an increasingly international platform for over 2000 artists who find it difficult to access the art world because of health, disability or social circumstance. The project won the Charity Award for Arts, Culture and Heritage in 2013. For more information visit www.outsidein.org.uk.
David Bomberg, Self-Portrait, 1937, Oil on board, Pallant House Gallery (Wilson Gift through The Art Fund, 2004), © Estate of Colin St John Wilson
LONDON ART FAIR 2015 Pallant House Gallery has been invited to be the official museum partner for London Art Fair 2015 at the Business Design Centre, Islington from 20-25 January 2015. London Art Fair is the UK’s premier art fair with over 100 galleries presenting the very best in Modern British and contemporary art. This exciting opportunity enables us to promote the Gallery to an audience of some 30,000 visitors, highlighting the richness of our permanent collection as well as the scale and ambition of our exhibition programme. Housed in a pavilion at the front of the fair, we will showcase the exceptional figurative art in our collection with a unique exhibition ‘The Figure in Modern British Art’, including works by Walter Sickert, Henry Moore, Duncan Grant, Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton, curated by Artistic Director Simon Martin. KIRKER HOLIDAYS AND DE’LONGHI GRAND DRAW Thanks to the generosity of our exhibition sponsors, we have been given the opportunity to hold a Grand Draw at the Gallery during the Spanish Civil War exhibition. The Gallery’s headline sponsors, De’Longhi, are offering a top of the range PrimaDonna S DeLuxe Coffee Maker, and Kirker Holidays are offering a cultural short break for two to Madrid including accommodation in a four-star hotel and entrance tickets to one of the city’s great art galleries. All the funds raised from this Grand Draw will support the Gallery’s forthcoming exhibition programme. You can support the Gallery by buying tickets at reception and selling books of raffle tickets to friends and family. 17
NEW ACQUISITIONS & LOANS Pallant House Gallery has acquired, with the support of the Friends, eight wood engravings by the artist Clare Leighton. These include the four woodcuts commissioned for The Forum magazine, September 1926, depicting images of rural life, such as ploughing and lambing and three images from The Farmer’s Year (1932): Threshing (March), Apple Picking (September) and Ploughing (November). These, together with The Malthouse (1923), provide a memorable depiction of a rural way of life, seasonal ritual and an awareness of nature that Leighton was concerned had been lost in an increasingly mechanised age. A significant new loan coming to the Gallery in Autumn is George Leslie Hunter’s, Still Life with Cut Melon, Glass and Fan, (c.1919/20). Hunter’s visits to Italy and France and his association with the Scottish Colourists brought an awareness of the developments in European art made by Matisse and the Fauves to Britain, proving influential to artists such as Matthew Smith and David Bomberg. As such this new loan will form part of that chronology within the Pallant House Gallery permanent displays as well as providing a means for further exploration of the still-life tradition.
George Leslie Hunter, Still life with Cut Melon, Glass and Fan, c.1919/20, Oil on canvas, On Loan from the Cross Family Collection (2014)
CATALYST ENDOWMENT APPEAL Since the last magazine, the Gallery has now raised £539,161 towards its target of £1million thanks in particular to two legacies and a generous grant from Sir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary Settlement. The Gallery now has until 30 June 2016 to raise the balance of £460,000 to be able to receive the match-
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funding grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This is a wonderful opportunity to increase the Gallery’s existing endowment fund by an additional £2million and generate secure income of around £100,000 per annum towards the Gallery’s running costs. For more information on this Appeal, and how you can make a contribution, please contact Elaine Bentley, Head of Development (01243 770844 / e.bentley@pallant.org.uk). LOANS FROM THE COLLECTION By the end of the year Pallant House Gallery will have been represented by 14 artworks in ten different venues, including such prestigious institutions as Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid and Museo ThyssenBornemisza, Madrid. In supporting requests for external exhibitions the Gallery not only raises its profile at home and abroad, but underlines the breadth and significance of the Collections. Paul Nash’s Wittenham (1935) will be included in an exhibition focused on the artist’s watercolours at Piano Nobile, London, from 8 October – 22 November 2014. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue written by David Boyd Haycock. In October we welcome back Hers is a Lush Situation (1958) by Richard Hamilton, currently at Reina Sofia, but having toured extensively in Europe prior to that as part of the exhibition ‘Pop Art Design’. As a major work by Hamilton and of huge importance within the Pop Art Movement, it is much in demand and leaves again next spring for a major American tour. GABO TRUST FUNDING Following a successful application to the Gabo Trust the Gallery has achieved funding to carry out a comprehensive conservation survey of our sculpture collection. Over the last three months we have been working with Derek Pullen and Jackie Heuman from Sculpcons Ltd, photographing, assessing and condition-checking all our sculptural works. Observations for each sculpture will be collated to make recommendations for maintenance, care and treatment and to identify works for conservation. In the long term, the project will enable us to more easily assess treatment needs for individual works and continue to improve standards of collection care. Ultimately it will allow greater public access for the works through external loans and inclusion within touring exhibitions.
WALTER NESSLER 1912 – 2001
Tarragona, Spain 1955
To view further works by Walter Nessler please contact Denys Wilcox at The Court Gallery +44 (0)1984 639969 or visit www.courtgallery.com Viewings can be held at St. James's, London, sw1a or West Quantoxhead, Somerset, ta4 4dx By appointment only 19
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CONSCIENCE AND CONFLICT: BRITISH ARTISTS AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR As the first ever exhibition to focus on British visual artists’ reactions to the Spanish Civil War opens at Pallant House Gallery, Artistic Director Simon Martin explores the strength and breadth of a response that crossed geographical boundaries and united a whole generation of artists.
In the popular imagination, the Spanish Civil War exists largely as a ‘literary’ conflict that was recorded and brought to life by authors such as George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia (1938) and Ernest Hemingway in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Stephen Spender memorably described it as the ‘poets’ war’, reflecting the significant number of poets and writers who went from Britain and Ireland to volunteer in various capacities in Spain, including W.H. Auden, David Gascoyne, John Cornford, Valentine Ackland, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Julian Bell, and Spender himself, not to mention the many others who wrote poetry in response to the conflict without being directly involved in the field. Yet in terms of artistic response, whilst the documentary photographs of Robert Capa and the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica (1937) are very well known, many people are surprised when one speaks about British artists and the Spanish Civil War. In contrast to the huge amount of attention given to the artists of the First and Second World Wars, the conflict that took place between 1936 and 1939 has often been overlooked, described by Hemingway as ‘the dress rehearsal for the inevitable European war’. But whilst Britain was officially neutral, having signed a nonintervention treaty, for many British artists and writers the Spanish Civil War went beyond being an internal conflict between the democratically elected Republicans and General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist rebels to representing a wider battle against Fascism in Europe. The Civil War was a battleground for opposing ideologies Ursula McCannell, Fleeing Family, 1940, Oil on board The Haines Collection, © The Artist
in the 1930s and inspired a generation of artists to create work that engaged deeply with the issues of their times. Of more than 40,000 men and women who travelled from 53 countries to join the International Brigades fighting for the Republican cause, around 2500 were from Britain, including the artist Clive Branson (who produced memorable drawings of fellow volunteers), the landscape painter Wogan Phillips and sculptor Jason Gurney, whose career was ended following a bullet through the hand. In November 1936 Vanessa Bell wrote to her son Julian urging him against volunteering to fight in the International Brigades: ‘I feel strongly that if you want really to do what is best for the world and not only what would relieve your own feelings most at the moment, it is clearly better to help by thinking, writing, speaking, planning, rather than action in the field.’ Bell’s concerns were tragically realised when Julian was killed in a bombing raid in 1937, whilst serving as an ambulance driver in Spain. The question of whether it was better for artists and writers to enlist or to support the fight against Fascism through the creation of works of art that would raise funds and influence opinions, was the cause of much discussion in the late 1930s, particularly following the death in August 1936 of the British artist Felicia Browne whilst serving with a Republican militia. An exhibition of Browne’s drawings of militiamen and women recovered from her sketchbook inspired many artists to join the left-wing Artists International Association, which was to organise numerous exhibitions and schemes 21
E McKnight Kauffer, Help Wounded Human Beings: Help to Send Medical Aid to Spain, c.1937, Gouache on paper, Victoria and Albert Museum, © Simon Rendall. Opposite page: Frank Brangwyn, For the Relief of Women and Children in Spain, 1936-37, Lithograph on paper, published by General Relief Fund for Distressed Women and Children in Spain, Leicestershire County Council Artworks Collection © David Brangwyn.
in support of Spanish aid. This included the exhibition ‘Artists help Spain’ in 1936 which helped raise funds to send an ambulance to the front and the ‘Portraits for Spain’ scheme for which leading artists painted portraits (or in the case of Eric Ravilious, a picture of a country house) with proceeds going towards Spanish relief. The artists involved in the AIA crossed all artistic styles, from the Bloomsbury Group to abstract artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Alistair Morton, the Surrealists and the realist artists. In an attempt to take their work out of the gallery and to engage with non-elite audiences, numerous British artists designed banners for use at political protests and processions (such as the International Brigade banner made by the AIA which will be on show in the exhibition). Around 90 artists took part in painting a series of billboards around London calling for food supplies for Spain and several designed posters in support of the Spanish Relief Campaigns. This included a powerful poster featuring an El Greco head, entitled Help Send Medical Aid to Spain (c. 1937) that was designed by E McKnight Kauffer and Spain (193637) by the more traditional Frank Brangwyn, which depicts a Madonna-‐like mother holding a child amidst desperate scenes. 22
Spain’s artistic heritage was a point of reference for many artists, particularly Goya’s 19th-century etchings The Disasters of War (1910-1920), a set of which were controversially exhibited at the V&A in 1938 and seen as making a political statement about the atrocities of the war. Edward Burra, who had been in Spain at the outbreak of the war was horrified by the violence and destruction, having witnessed the burning of a church, and he subsequently produced macabre watercolours with an atmosphere of menace populated by sinister cloaked figures, such as The Watcher (c.1937) and Medusa (1938). In a similar manner, Wyndham Lewis, who was in fact critical of communist activity in Spain, depicted the 15th century Siege of Barcelona as a telling comparative event in his modernist painting The Surrender of Barcelona (1934–7). The British Surrealists engaged closely in the politics of the Spanish Civil War and published manifestos campaigning against the official British policy of nonintervention. They called for ‘Arms for Spain’ to counter the military support supplied to Franco’s Nationalists by Hitler and Mussolini. Henry Moore designed the cover of a Surrealist Manifesto ‘We Ask Your Attention’ (1937), and a later print The Spanish Prisoner (1939) anticipates several of his drawings and sculptures that express themes of containment and threat, such as The Helmet (1939-40). SW Hayter, who ran the print studio Atelier 17 in Paris, travelled to Spain in 1937, which inspired several paintings and etchings including his Surrealist masterpiece Paysage Anthropophage (1937), based on the story of the destruction of the ancient city of Numancia that paralleled the modern conflict. Hayter also printed the Solidarité and Fraternité portfolios (1936, 1939) in support of Spanish relief, which included etchings by the likes of Picasso, Miró and Kandinsky, as well as British artists. In the 1938 London May Day Procession the artists FE McWilliam, Roland Penrose and Julian Trevelyan protested at the British Government’s appeasement policies by marching wearing masks made by McWilliam that depicted Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, one of which is included in the exhibition. As a friend of Picasso and numerous European Surrealists, Roland Penrose was to play an important role, travelling to Catalonia in late 1936 with the writer Christian Zervos to prepare a report on the fate of artistic treasures in the
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Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman (Femme en pleurs), 26 October 1937, Oil on canvas, Tate. Accepted by H.M. Governement in lieu of tax with additional payment (Grant-in-Aid) made with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund and the Friends of Tate Gallery, 1987, © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2014 Opposite Page Henry Moore, Spanish Prisoner, 1939, charcoal, wax crayon, chalk, watercolour wash on paper, The Moore Danowski Trust, photo: Michael Phipps, The Henry Moore Foundation archive, Reproduced by permission of The Henry Moore Foundation FE McWilliam, Spanish Head, 1938-9, Hopton Wood Stone, The Sherwin Collection, © Estate of FE McWilliam
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war. He also helped to bring Picasso’s Guernica (1937) to Britain, where it was exhibited with related studies at the New Burlington Galleries in October 1938 and at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (and subsequently a Manchester Car showroom) in early 1939. It was seen by thousands of working-class men and women as well as many artists on whom it had a profound impact. Penrose was also to buy Picasso’s Weeping Woman (1937) directly from the artist. This iconic painting, a visceral response to the horror of the Spanish Civil War, joined Guernica in exhibitions in this country. Picasso’s imagery had an immense impact on British art, notably influencing the forms of FE McWilliam’s Hoptonwood stone sculpture Spanish Head (1938–9), the abstract imagery of Merlyn Evans’ painting Distressed Area (1938) and Henry Moore’s sculpture Three Points (1939-40) which recalls the screaming mouths in Picasso’s painting and studies. The desolating effects of the bombings on Spanish civilians also directly influenced a series of paintings by John Armstrong of ruined buildings, such as Revelations (1938) and Walter Nessler’s Premonition (1937), which imagined how similar bombings might affect London in a premonition of the Blitz. The huge refugee crisis caused by the Spanish Civil War led to millions of displaced people in Spain
and more than 500,000 in France. The plight of the Spanish refugees inspired paintings by one of the most unique British artists to emerge in the late 1930s: the teenage artist Ursula McCannell, who had visited Spain in the months leading to the outbreak of war. McCannell collected photographs of refugees by the likes of Robert Capa that were published in magazines such as Picture Post and used these as the source material for accomplished paintings such as Fleeing Family (1940). Following the bombing of Guernica and other cities in Northern Spain, more than 4000 Basque children (some not much younger than McCannell) were evacuated on the crowded steamship Habana, docking in Southampton in May 1937. They were sent to a camp at North Stoneham in Hampshire, and subsequently the ‘niños vascos’ were dispersed to colonies around the country (including Brighton, Hove, Lancing, Southampton and Worthing) run and financed by volunteers, trade unions and church groups. The documentary photographers Edith Tudor-Hart and Helen Muspratt both visited the Basque Refugee Camp and took memorable sequences of photographs capturing life in the camps for the children: preparing vegetables, playing cricket and meeting English school boys. 25
Merlyn Evans, Distressed Area, Febraury 1938, Tempera on canvas over panel , Collection of Stephen Rich, London © Estate of Merlyn Evans Opposite Quentin Bell, May Day Procession with Banner, 14 July 1937, Oil on canvas, The Farringdon Collection Trust © Anne Olivier Bell
Once described as ‘the last great cause’, the Spanish Civil War continued to inspire artists in the years after the war ended in 1939, such as R.B. Kitaj who created several paintings and prints in the 1960s dealing with themes from the Spanish Civil War. These include his painting La Pasionaria (1969) depicting the communist politician Dolores Ibárruri giving an impassioned speech, the enigmatic Junta (1962) featuring an imaginary revolutionary junta including a figure based on the anarcho-syndicalist militant Buenaventura Durruti. Others such as the abstract artists Terry Frost and Sean Scully have been inspired by the poetry of the Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) who was killed by pro-Franco forces on 19 August 1936. Frost’s prints will be on show in the De’Longhi Print Room to complement the main exhibition. It is often stated that British art in the first-half of the twentieth-century was somehow insular, or operating in a vacuum, but organisations such as the Artists International Association, the activities of the Surrealist Group and the deep commitment to action on behalf of the Spanish Republic show that the truth is far more complex. Although there is a huge amount written about the political history of the Spanish Civil War, there 26
has never been a book or exhibition specifically about how British artists have engaged with the conflict. The exhibition brings together material from a range of sources and in a variety of media, including painting, printmaking, drawing, posters, banners, photographs and sculptures, to demonstrate the extent to which artists engaged with a civil war in another country. Marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, this exhibition, featuring works that remain moving and arresting so many years after the conflict has ended, is a testament to the creativity and intention of the artists. The works transcend being journalistic or transitory statements to being expressions of something deeper about humanity. The story of those whose conscience led them to create these artworks, or to volunteer to fight, to serve in medical aid, or to assist with the Spanish refugees in this country or in France, is inspirational and deserves to be better known. Conscience and Conflict: British Artists and the Spanish Civil War is at Pallant House Gallery from 8 November 2014 – 15 February 2015. A programme of talks (see page 53) and a fully illustrated catalogue (£24.95, available in the Bookshop) accompanies the exhibition.
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REMAKING PICASSO’S GUERNICA: A WORK OF ART, AN ACT OF PROTEST In 1938-1939 Pablo Picasso’s anti-war painting Guernica (1937) was exhibited in Britain to raise awareness of the Spanish Civil War. This autumn a new textile version of the painting is displayed at Pallant House Gallery. Members of the Remaking Picasso’s Guernica Collective Nicola Ashmore, Maude Casey, Louise Purbrick and Megha Rajguru explain its continuing relevance today.
A group of activists and artists, known as the Remaking Picasso’s Guernica Collective, has been moved by recent wars and conflicts to recreate the famous painting in the form of a textile protest banner. The collective involves people from Amnesty International, Brighton Anti-Fascists, Gatwick Detainee Visitors Group, Migrant English Project, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, University of Brighton and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Pablo Picasso created Guernica (1937) as an expression of outrage and protest following the attack on the Basque town of Gernika in 1937. It was the first civilian attack by aerial bombardment, using technologies that were then refined and employed on civilian populations throughout the Second World War, and continue to be utilised in conflicts today. Through the making of the Guernica banner, the collective aims to make connections between fascism and militarism. Picasso’s original Guernica painting was painted in various shades of grey, black and white, with symbols that represented the artist’s grief and rage including a cacophony of distressed women, a soldier and a dead baby, a screaming bird, a bull and a dying horse. In the remaking, we have continued to use symbolic references, using materials such as Khadi and Keffiyeh, both fabrics of activism. Mahatma Gandhi introduced Khadi during the colonial struggles in India to promote Swadeshi or home rule, and it has been used to create the homes and buildings depicted in Guernica, making a poetic link with Gandhi’s campaign for home rule. As a collective we decided to portray the dying soldier with his broken sword as a Palestinian, using Kefiyyeh, a widely recognised fabric employed as a A public sewing event for Remaking Picasso's Guernica
form of protest by Palestinians from the 1960s. The soldier holds an olive branch, which symbolizes peace. On the body of Picasso’s horse we drew tiny figures, to represent the uncounted and unnamed people killed in drone attacks. We also introduced colour to an essentially monochromatic image alluding to racial diversity manifest in the shapes of the mother and the dead baby. Using techniques such as tracing, embroidery, quilting, burning and drawing, pieces were sewn onto the background in public spaces with an open invitation for people to join in. So far the banner has travelled to Manchester, India, Brixton, the V&A in London and Pallant House Gallery in Chichester where it is now to be displayed. The significance of the stitch as a universal and ancient form as well as a mark of personal expression translates well from place to place. The completed banner contains a multitude of stitches by unnamed participants, regardless of place of birth (some political refugees, others economic migrants), age, religion, sex and gender, rendering the stitch itself both a personal and universal form of protest. Remaking Picasso’s Guernica is on display in The Garden Gallery at Pallant House Gallery from 8 November 2014 to 15 February 2015
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THE LANGUAGE OF FREEDOM: TERRY FROST AND THE POETRY OF FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA Ahead of an exhibition in the De’Longhi Print Room focusing on the British abstract artist Terry Frost and his engagement with the poetry of Spanish writer Federico García Lorca, Katy Norris, Assistant Curator, considers their common interest in nature, death and the Duende.
The Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca was amongst the first victims of the Spanish Civil War, killed by the rebel militia during the early Nationalist uprisings in Granada in 1936. A prominent figure in the cultural life of the Republic, his death is counted amongst the worst atrocities of the conflict and widely upheld as evidence of the violent suppression of the intellectual left by right-wing partisans. After General Franco seized power in 1939 the authoritarian government issued an immediate ban on Lorca’s work. Only in 1953 was a ‘complete’, albeit censored, anthology of his work finally published in Spain, whilst the circumstances surrounding Lorca’s murder were not acknowledged until Franco himself died in 1975. It was during this relatively open era in European politics that Terry Frost first began making pictures in response to Lorca’s writing. Creating paper collages, drawings and prints over a period of fifteen years, the culmination of the project was his portfolio of coloured etchings, each made for a different poem and folded within a page of the corresponding verse. Eleven Poems by Federico García Lorca (1989), or the Lorca Suite as the project is commonly known, takes poems from the most significant of Lorca’s writings including Book of Poems (1921), Songs (1921-24), Gypsy Ballads (1924-1927) and Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (1935). In his pictures, Frost uses his personal language of abstract symbols to unlock the emotional power of the verses. As Sir Alan Bowness wrote in a monograph of the artist in 1994, the prints offer a visual equivalent
to the written language, since they are ‘not the illustrations to’ but the ‘illuminations of’ the verses. Lorca’s poetry is steeped in the mythology of rural Spain, merging an experimental style of prose with the traditional ballads and flamenco songs of his native Andalusia. It is often said that his writing is characterised by an indefinable longing which is never satisfied. In the poem ‘Rider’s Song’, for example, Lorca withholds the object of the horseman’s desire and gives no indication of why he wishes to travel to Cordoba. We know only that he will not reach it: Over the plain, through the wind black pony, red moon. Death keeps a watch on me from Cordoba’s towers. Oh such a way to go And, oh, my spirited pony! but death awaits before I ever reach Cordoba! In these lines the notion of unfulfilled desire is created through the use of obscure metaphors which, though powerful, never quite offer up a single, determinable meaning. In this way Lorca reminds his readers of the limitations of language and the fundamental inability of an artist to capture the reality of experience, acknowledged by him as ‘the sad state of wanting and not being able to’. Yet Frost viewed this lack of fulfilment, or sense of absence, positively. For
Terry Frost, The Moon Rising, 1989, Etching on paper, Austin / Desmond Fine Art © The Estate of Sir Terry Frost
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From Left to Right Terry Frost in his Studio Terry Frost, The Spinster at Mass, 1989, Etching on paper, Austin / Desmond Fine Art © The Estate of Sir Terry Frost Terry Frost, Lament for Ignacio Sanches Mejias, 1989, Etching on paper, Austin / Desmond Fine Art © The Estate of Sir Terry Frost
him it opened up a space between representation and reality where he could let his creativity run free: ‘With Lorca I travel on a ride to no-man’s land…my emotions take on a new distance and the extent between life and death becomes forever’. Frost’s lifelong pursuit of his artistic right to freedom of expression can be traced back to his own experience of Fascism during the 1940s. A prisoner of war during the Second World War, Frost spent four years between the ages of 26 and 30 interned at Stalag 383 in Hohenfels, Bavaria. His imprisonment signified a severe loss of freedom, but it also awakened his political and artistic consciousness. In Stalag he met his close friend, the painter Adrian Heath, who encouraged him to take up painting and he encountered Republican veterans from the Spanish Civil War from who he learnt of the brutality of Franco’s regime. It is very possible that these men also introduced him to the writings of Lorca, although Frost recalled that he only read his poetry in detail much later. He depicted his fellow inmates in numerous portraits and he also painted scenes of the camp, cut off from the surrounding landscape by barbed wire, in works that are reminiscent of paintings by the artist Clive Branson, imprisoned in the Spanish camps during the 1930s. Captivity forced Frost to concentrate his mind and enabled him to look at his subjects with a deeper understanding. As he was to later explain: ‘In the prisoner of war camp…I got tremendous spiritual experience, a more heightened perception during starvation, and honestly do not think that awakening has ever left me. There are moments when I can tune in to the ‘truth’, contact that other part of us, and Nature.’ Over the following decades Frost worked on distilling his surroundings into his unique form of abstraction, making paintings derived from the landscapes in Cornwall and Yorkshire as well as further afield in Cyprus and Spain. When he approached the writings of Lorca he responded with similar 32
inventiveness to the numerous references to nature in the poetry, interpreting the Spaniard’s metaphors with his own vocabulary of chevrons, circles and half circles. Both poet and painter shared a fascination with the sun and moon, which appear in their work in a variety of shapes and guises. Remarkably Lorca’s use of black, white and red to describe the blazing glare and heat of the Mediterranean sun is also common to Frost’s paintings of the 1960s that were inspired by his travels to Spain. However, according to Heath, it was only around the time of his engagement with Lorca that Frost began to use these colours as a structuring device in his pictures. In the Lorca Suite the scheme is most strictly adhered to in his pictures for The Spinsters at Mass (1989) and The Moon Rising (1989) but it also features strongly in his emblematic etching Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (1989), which represents a black bull’s horn and the red blood of Ignacio Sanchez together with a reverberating yellow disc to signify a piercing sun. Recounting the death of Lorca’s friend, an unfortunate matador who was gored by a bull at exactly five in the afternoon, Frost’s reduction of the story to these three basic elements reflects perfectly the repetitious format of the narrative:
‘Oh white wall of Spain! Oh black bull of sorrow! Oh hard blood of Ignacio!’ Lorca described Ignacio’s death as an ‘apprenticeship’ for his own death and wrote the poem as a way of coming to terms with human mortality. He contemplated at length the connection between death and the Duende, a concept in Spanish culture that refers to the heightened state of emotion needed for artistic invention, and believed that this intensity of feeling could only be possible if a person was acutely conscious of death. In a lecture delivered in Buenos Aires in 1934 Lorca argued that the Duende gave rise to authentic, ‘spontaneous creation’, yet, in Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias, Lorca’s language follows a strict rhythm that is noticeably calculated. It is a paradox that Frost also explored in his notebooks, under the heading ’Desire, imagination and discipline’ in which he stated that in order to give form to his ideas the painter must ‘clip the wings of imagination’. As with Lorca’s poetry, Frost’s painting and graphic work was the consequence of long deliberation although the final result appears spontaneous and uninhibited. The Lorca Suite holds this conflict between free expression
and creative discipline in perfect tension, evoking the narrative drama and vibrancy of the language with carefully placed marks and touches of vivid colour. When Frost commented that in Lorca the ‘distance between life and death becomes forever’ he was not so much referring to the reality of human existence as speaking figuratively about the life and death of ideas. Despite the censorship of Lorca’s writings by General Franco’s regime in Spain, his concepts lived on long after his brutal murder and they found new meaning in Frost’s inventive portfolio of etchings. Now, just under eight decades after Lorca’s murder and eleven years since Frost’s death in 2003, an exhibition of these works in the De’Longhi Print Room asks us to reconsider the poignancy of the series within the context of British artists’ responses to the Spanish Civil War. What these works say about our fundamental freedom to imagine and create is just as important today as when they first were first conceived. Terry Frost: Eleven Poems by Federico García Lorca will be in the De’Longhi Print Room from 29 October 2014 – 15 February 2015. A talk by author Dominic Kemp entitled ‘Prints and Poetry: Terry Frost and Federico García Lorca’ takes place at the Gallery on Thurs 11 December, 6pm. 33
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ANGRY YOUNG MEN This season a selection from Ruth Borchard’s significant collection of self-portraits by British artists goes on display in the Queen Anne townhouse. Andrew Graham-Dixon considers how the collection sheds light on the gloomy post-war years.
One of the world’s best-kept secret museums is the ‘Vasari Corridor’ in Florence, a long winding passage that runs across the rooftops of the Uffizi Gallery, then along the tops of the ancient traders’ houses on the Ponte Vecchio, then all the way to the Boboli Gardens, where it finally issues in an exit close to a Mannerist fountain. Built by the Medici family as a secret conduit between their two grand palaces, the Palazzo Signoria and the Pitti Palace, it was later put to use as the home for the world’s first museum of self-portraits. Hundreds of these works line the corridor’s walls, forming a pantheon of the world’s most celebrated artists, from Raphael to van Gogh and beyond – a winding enfilade of edgy selfscrutiny. Sad to say, it is rarely open to the public, because the viewing arrangements are themselves an Italian masterpiece of arcane bureaucracy, but a visit is unforgettable, like walking through a train packed with famous and half-familiar faces. There is Rembrandt, skulking in the shadows. There is Salvator Rosa, with his memorable scowl. There is Vincent, with his sad, intelligent eyes. It seems a shame that, most of the time, they should be kept in the dark with only each other for company It turns out that there is another fascinating little-known collection of self-portraits, not in Italy but in England. Face to Face: British Self-Portraits, a book by Phillip Vann published in 2005, lifted the lid on this remarkable, privately created collection of exactly 100 pictures. The author tells the story of the formation of the
Ruth Borchard Collection, as it is known, after its creator, as well as reproducing and cataloguing its contents. The self-portraits in Ruth Borchard’s collection were all painted between 1921 and the 1970s. Most are by natives of the United Kingdom but some were done by émigrés from central Europe who had settled in England before the Second World War, others by expatriate Canadians or Americans, others by painters originally from yet further afield, such as the energetically Picassoesque, politically inspired artist Newton Souza, who came to London from Goa in 1949, and remembered being ‘astonished’ by the ‘grimness of post-war Britain’. Many of the pictures collected by Ruth Borchard are by relatively little-known artists, and by no means could all of them be described as masterpieces. But that is a strong part of their collective charm. Although they span about half a century, the majority of them were painted during the 1950s and 1960s, many by artists who were still students – or at the very beginning of their careers- and they have a powerful reek of the period about them. This is not just a question of clothes and hairstyles (although it is partly that), but also of how these pictures reflect the emotional temper of the times. Art students nowadays are a cynical lot compared with their touchingly vulnerable, idealistic, fauxarrogant counterparts of four or five decades ago. The young Kenneth Brazier stares out of a small canvas painted in 1960, with an expression of carefully
Brian Rees, Self-Portrait, 1955-63, gouache and pen and ink on paper, courtesy of Robert Travers, Piano Nobile Works of Art, London © The Estate of Brian Rees
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calibrated angst etched on his face. In a self-portrait done just a few years later, Peter Coker, clad in his painting apron and an open-necked shirt, gazes uneasily at himself in a three-quarter length mirror and wonders, brow furrowed, if he likes what he sees. Anthony Eyton, painting himself as an earnest blur in apparent homage to Manet or Degas, seems as though he is fencing with his own uncapturable likeness, while Peter Freeth depicts himself as if frozen in the glare of an artificial light, isolated on an abstract background somewhat reminiscent of Mark Rothko’s later paintings. Could the young Freeth have been to America? Or have seen the Rothko show organised, in the early 1960s, by the late lamented Bryan Robertson at the Whitechapel Gallery? Elsewhere in the collection, a very young Anthony Green paints himself in a livid interior, under a bare lightbulb, its radiance rendered in ripples of impastose paint reminiscent of the hallucinogenic –even psychotic – overtones evoked by van Gogh in some of his later paintings such as The Billiard Table. Green stared out like a man possessed, every inch the modern Vincent – c.1960, that is. Generally speaking, jaws jut and stares are confrontational. There artists are very much Angry Young Men, bohemians on a mission. One of the best pictures is a pugnacious self-portrait, beautifully drawn, by the somewhat underappreciated Welsh painter Brian Rees. Its combination of gritty realism and linear delicacy recalls the work of Lucian Freud, a notable absentee from the Borchard Collection, from the same period. Rees relishes in his own dishevelment, perhaps after a night, or even a night and a day on the town. Chest hairs emerge over the top of his creased vest, he has a five o’clock shadow as palpable as glasspaper, and he is wearing a pair of glasses of the type favoured by the young Michael Caine. Ruth Borchard was in sympathy with the outsider ethos of the art of the 1950s and 1960s –decades, incidentally, when The Outsider, Colin Wilson’s study of the alienated creative imagination, was much in vogue. She was herself something of an outsider. Borchard was born in 1910 and brought up in a fishing village near Hamburg. She and her husband, Kurt, who ran the family shipping business in Germany, fled to England to escape Hitler’s National Socialists in 1939. They had four children and settled in a large house in Reigate. Kurt continued to work, profitably, in the shipping business, while Ruth wrote children’s books and studies of Jewish mysticism, dabbled in dowsing, and, at the end of the 1950s, conceived the 36
idea of collecting artist’s self-portraits. Every week, she religiously did the rounds of the few galleries that showed modern painting. ‘Often I bought one of the first paintings the young artist ever sold,’ she later wrote in some autobiographical notes that also hint at the occasional domestic spat occasioned by her burgeoning acquisitiveness: ‘With a cheque given to me to buy a refrigerator I bought two early Ruskin Spears’. She created strict rules for herself, setting a target of 100 pictures. She disliked anything smacking of America, or Pop Art - she called it ‘surface froth’ - which may explain why the young David Hockney and many of his contemporaries at the Royal College in the 1960s are missing from her collection. She preferred painters who worked in what might be called an Expressionist idiom. She approached each artist directly, and kept to a strict budget of 21 guineas (£22.05) for each work. Some refused her, finding this too meagre a fee, but it is a tribute to her powers of persuasion that so many played along. Young painters in particular responded enthusiastically. Not only did they need the money, but because commissions were for self-portraits they were spared the expense of paying for models. Borchard explained the raison d’être behind her collection in another passage from her autobiographical notes: ‘In literature, my taste ran to introspective books: diaries, autobiographies, letters. Over the years, I often felt tempted to collect first editions of these moderns. Then, one day, mounting up the stairs in our house, I was struck by the idea that introspection in painting meant self-portraits. I vividly remember the moment, even the step, where I suddenly saw our landing crowded with paintings, all sizes, types, media. And this is exactly what has come to pass.’ Ruth Borchard died in Jerusalem in 2000, and it is to her heirs’ credit that they would seem to have decided to keep her fascinating collection intact, and share it with the public at large. This is an abridged version of an article by Andrew Graham-Dixon originally published in The Sunday Telegraph Magazine in 2005. British Self-Portraits: Highlights from the Ruth Borchard Collection, supported by Piano Nobile, will be on display in Galleries 3 and 4 of the Queen Anne townhouse from 18 October 2014 – 31 May 2015. A talk by author James Hall entitled ‘The Self-Portrait: A Cultural History’ takes place at the Gallery on Thurs 29 January, 6pm.
Clockwise from top left William Gear, Self-Portrait, 1953, pen and ink on paper, courtesy of Robert Travers, Piano Nobile Works of Art, London © The Estate of William Gear Peter Coker, Self-portrait, 1966, oil on board, Private collection courtesy of Robert Travers, Piano Nobile Works of Art, London © The Estate of Peter Coker Ithell Colquhoun, Self-Portrait, c.1929, oil on canvas, courtesy of Robert Travers, Piano Nobile Works of Art, London © The Estate of Ithell Colquhoun 37
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THE ART OF COMMUNITY Head of Learning and Community Sandra Peaty discusses the evolution of Pallant House Gallery’s pioneering Community Programme, and explains how a distinct focus on the individual is key to its success.
The Community Programme at Pallant House Gallery has evolved hugely over the past twelve years and is today widely respected for providing long-term, meaningful, and creative opportunities for a diverse range of people from the local community – it now numbers over 150 active members. We have developed a unique way of working that celebrates and supports the individual’s creative development. The Gallery Studio is at the heart of it all, hosting a diverse weekly programme. Each session offers a distinctive and supportive environment developed around the differing needs of the participants. They range from lively, sociable drop-ins and dedicated Quiet Sessions, to group sessions facilitated by practising artists and Community Pallant Workshops exploring new techniques, delivered by Artist Educators. The focus of all the Gallery's work is on people’s individual creative interests rather than their disability or other support needs, whilst providing a positive and safe place to be. This approach gives participants respite from the everyday assumptions and prejudices surrounding disabilities, resulting in a newfound confidence both personally and in their creative practice. Over the years a strong self-supporting creative community has evolved at the Gallery where long-standing members welcome and include new people, showing a genuine interest in each other’s practice. Partners in Art has made a significant contribution to this emerging strong community. Initially set up as a Nicola Hancock, Joy Present, Oil on canvas
stand-alone scheme when it was founded at the Gallery in 2002, it is now an integral part of the programme. The initiative carefully matches a volunteer practising artist or enthusiast with someone with additional support needs due to health, disability or social circumstance. Together they share and develop a mutual interest in art, meeting regularly to create together, visit exhibitions, art classes or community art events. These partnerships are designed to meet the creative ambitions of both individuals and often last over three years. The Community Programme continues to evolve this autumn as we develop a new initiative for those living with dementia as well as their carers. Using training provided by The Alzheimer’s Society and our existing Partners in Art approach, we aim to give those in the early stages of dementia ongoing creative opportunities through workshops and short themed tours that will stimulate imaginative discussion. As testament to our inclusive attitude to community-based programming, these sessions will be open to all our active members, and all existing sessions open to those with dementia. The recently formed Fundraising Committee, set up by our existing members, aims to raise essential core funds with a set target of £2,500 which will be matchfunded by a private donor. The sale of Partners in Art Christmas cards (see page 47) is an essential part of the fundraising drive. For further information on the Community Programme or fundraising contact Sandra Peaty at s.peaty@pallant.org.uk 39
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OUTSIDE IN TOOVEYS This year, Toovey’s Antique and Fine Art Auctioneers has chosen Pallant House Gallery’s pioneering project Outside In as the nominated charity for its Christmas Private View and Charity Auction. Rupert Toovey, a longstanding supporter and sponsor of Pallant House Gallery, shares some of his thoughts about the Gallery and Outside In with Executive Director Marc Steene.
MARC STEENE: I wondered what it was that first brought Pallant House Gallery to your attention. RUPERT TOOVEY: It was simply the fact that the Gallery has one of the finest permanent collections of Modern British art in the country. But also its wonderful sense of community and superb exhibition programme. MS: I have heard you speak often about our unique blend of a preeminent collection, well researched exhibitions, and a compassionate and ground-breaking learning and community programme, but I wondered if you could summarise what the Gallery means to you? RT: It is a place where you find passionate people with lively minds, and there is always a generosity of spirit that comes from a need to share knowledge and a mutual excitement. Lively minds make for open hearts and that’s what you find at Pallant House Gallery. It’s a rare thing and I love it. MS: I know you have a strong interest in Modern British art. Which artists and movements do you most admire and do you have a favourite work in the Gallery’s collection? RT: I have long maintained that Sussex is one of the important centres for Modern British artists working in the 20th century. Working as a priest in the Church of England, as well as a fine art auctioneer, I love that the Revd. Dean Walter Hussey’s collection is one of the Gallery’s building blocks - Graham Sutherland’s Crucifixion (1947) is remarkable. But my Kate Bradbury, Memory of Pain, 2005, © The Artist
favourite changes all the time. At the moment it’s the Ivon Hitchens landscapes. You can hear the music of the breeze in the leaves - that light and movement he depicts is so alive. MS: I know you have been interested in Outside In for a while, but could you tell me why you chose to support the project at your Christmas charity auction this year? RT: It is really exciting to see traditional values and institutional judgements challenged; for people to be empowered and gifted with expression rather than exclusion. Marc, you and the Gallery have been at the heart of this gentle revolution. There is a real quality of servant leadership in what you do, putting the needs of others first, which I really admire. So I am delighted to be supporting this important work. Art has the power to transform lives and never more than through Outside In. MS: What do you think Outside In and the Community Programme brings to the Gallery? RT: It is at the heart of the Gallery’s unique sense of community. It makes it truly alive in a particular and hopeful way. MS: What are you most looking forward to in the Gallery’s forthcoming exhibition programme? RT: Most certainly the main exhibition, ‘Conscience and Conflict: British Artists and the Spanish Civil War’ for the fact that it is the first of its kind to bring the visual artistic response to the conflict together in one place. 41
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ALICE KETTLE: ODYSSEY Odyssey (2003), an installation by leading British textile artist Alice Kettle, arrives at Pallant House Gallery this autumn. An extract from an essay by Sara Roberts dissects the role of narrative in Kettle’s work.
Even to those who don’t know Homer’s great poem The Odyssey itself, the characters are familiar. We absorb them through children’s stories, through references in literature, theatre and art; they are part of a shared symbolic order lodged deep in our collective culture: Circe, the goddess who turned the sailors into swine; the spaced-out Lotos eaters; the lumbering, terrifying Cyclops with its single eye; Scylla and Charybdis, the original ‘rock and a hard place’. The poem is rich in character, imagery and plot excitement and appropriately for Alice Kettle, textile reference. Circe’s pastimes aside, for four years Odysseus’ loyal wife Penelope successfully put off unwelcome suitors with the conceit that she had to complete a great textile: a shroud for her father-inlaw Laertes. She prolonged her freedom to await her husband’s return by intensive and deceptive endeavour: ‘... by day she wove at the great web, but every night had torches set beside it and undid the work.’ The Odyssey provides appropriate material for Alice’s recent work for all these reasons and more. She is fascinated with myth and storytelling, and this story allows for the exploration of emotional themes hung on an eventful epic narrative with enormous visual potential. Seeing the Victorian copy of the Bayeux Tapestry at Reading Museum strengthened her resolve to make a narrative work, gave her the confidence to attempt a complex story within a single piece, and influenced the format; unusually for Alice, Odyssey (2003) is a huge horizontal panel allowing for several scenes to be played out at once. It is epic, in a
modern cinematic sense, its surface shimmering with movement. The texture and pace of Homer’s Odyssey is reflected in part in Alice’s textile: it is a dense physical substance, an intensely-worked fabric supporting narrative and particular incident. Homer’s Odyssey uses the full metaphorical force of the journey: as a means of self-discovery through the exploration of the other, a marrying of history with new experience. The intensity of painting with stitch is, for Alice, akin to a journey: a process which transports the imagination, requiring an intense mental and emotional engagement and a resolution of problems along the way. Alice Kettle is an artist who has established a unique area of practice by her use of a craft medium, consistently and on an unparalleled scale. She has extended the possibilities of machine embroidery: producing works the size of tapestries, exploiting the textures and effects made possible through the harnessing of a mechanical process to intuitive, creative ends. The scale of her works belies their component parts: individual tiny stitches which combine to form great swathes of colour, painterly backgrounds incorporating rich hues and metallic sheen. Before her time at Goldsmiths’ textile department, and while studying Fine Art at Reading, she began making non-figurative abstract expressionist paintings, influenced by visiting tutors Albert Irvin and Terry Frost. She has carried this bold confidence with colour and composition into her figurative works, and
Alice Kettle, Odyssey, 2003, Thread on canvas, Courtesy of the artist © The Artist
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Alice Kettle, Odyssey, 2003, Thread on canvas, Courtesy of the artist © The Artist
indeed at the stage of their construction before the figures are introduced, these might be large colourfield works, one panel of colour reacting with its neighbour in a vibrant expressive whole. Odyssey (2003) marks a return to classical themes following a series of prestigious ecclesiastical commissions through the 1990s. It is distinguished not only by a new confidence in depiction of the figure, but also by an enhanced relationship between painting and drawing through stitch. Of late her drawing has become more assertive, with a new assuredness of line as well as of mass. She speaks of the process of laying down colours as meditative, a partly detached state which controls and allows an outpouring of emotion, but this intense process is also all-consuming, noisy and physically very demanding due to the scale of the work being manipulated. Months of this concerted repetitive effort finally give way to the charge of excitement at suddenly changing pace. Drawing with stitch is the climax of the creative process, a liberating release. Because of the thickness of the textile, its enormous bulk, and to achieve the stitch effects she desires, Alice frequently draws ‘blind’ from the back of the work, an edgy, risk-taking element. Like Penelope, she constructs and deconstructs, unafraid to cut through areas representing months of labour in 44
order to reconfigure a work, to erase and occasionally unpick stitched line and to redraw repeatedly. But traces remain: the evidence of these layers of thinking is apparent in the finished work, showing that meaning lies not only in the product but in the process. Alice has found, in The Odyssey, a bountiful seam of material with which to work: it is rich visual territory; it deals with grand themes; it is about longing and searching; it is expressive of so many human truths. Her Odyssey is ambitious both in its scale and its range, an epic work peopled by fully-developed interacting characters. It would have made an extraordinary painting, but the fact of its rich, dense fabric further emphasises its power and substance. Appropriately, Homer’s Odyssey supports not only a hero in Odysseus, retaining his primary objective throughout a long and eventful journey; but also a powerful heroine, Penelope, whose outward vulnerability belies great strength, and who keeps faith by weaving and unweaving. This is an abridged version of an essay by Sara Roberts originally published for the Ruthin Craft Centre for its touring exhibition catalogue in 2003. ‘Alice Kettle: Odyssey’ will be on display in the Stairwell and Gallery 2 from 18 October 2014 – May 2015. A talk by the artist, entitled ‘Eye of the Needle: The Textile Art of Alice Kettle’, takes places on Thurs 19 February, 6pm.
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Ceres, 1948, oil on canvas. Est. ÂŁ18,000-22,000
Stanley William Hayter: Painter-Printmaker Bloomsbury House, 24 Maddox Street, London W1S 1PP
Auction date: Wednesday 26th November 2014 Catalogues available online: www.bloomsburyauctions.com For more information or to subscribe to our mailing list, please contact: pwalker@bloomsburyauctions.com | +44 (0) 20 7495 9494 46
Rachel Best
Partners In Art
Christmas Cards 2014
Lily French
ÂŁ5.99 (Pack of 10 cards) 5 designs - 2 of each design Nicola Hancock
Marsha Jones Cards will be on sale in the Gallery or from Lucy Greenfield, Community Programme Coordinator Email l.greenfield@pallant.org.uk or telephone 07788489536 All profits made from the sale of these cards will contribute to the funding of Pallant House Gallery's Partners in Art initiative, which provides opportunities for people to access the art world on an equal footing, with a partner who shares their passion.
Belinda Paddock
CHAIRMAN OF THE FRIENDS' LETTER
Clive Branson, Daily Worker (July 22), 1939, Oil on canvas laid on board, Collection of Rosa Branson, © The Estate of Clive Branson
DEAR FRIENDS, PATRONS AND GALLERY CLUB MEMBERS, We have enjoyed a wonderful summer of exhibitions here at the Gallery including the JD Fergusson exhibition and this will undoubtedly continue with our Autumn programme. ‘Conscience and Conflict: British Artists and the Spanish Civil War’ is an internationally important exhibition which will explore for the first time how British artists responded to the conflict, alongside European artists such as Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. I was delighted to see so many Friends, both familiar and new, at the AGM in July. David Hopkinson, a previous Chairman of the Gallery, involved at its very beginning, gave a fascinating talk about the history of the Gallery and the building of the new wing. We sadly said goodbye to Alan Thurlow who has retired after approximately twenty years as a Trustee of the Friends. We are grateful to Alan for all his wisdom and support and particularly for arranging the popular Pallant Proms series which continues during the upcoming programme. We have also said a fond farewell to Gillian Thompson in the Friends office and welcome in her stead Mary Ambrose as Friends Office Manager, who 48
Pallant House Gallery Friends
will always be happy to see you in the Friends Office. The Gallery has been very fortunate to receive three significant legacies in recent months. All legacies are paid into our Endowment Fund to secure the future of the Gallery, and so we are always grateful to everyone who has remembered the Gallery in their will. For more information on legacies see page 52. We are also delighted to welcome two new Patrons to the Gallery this autumn. In June we were fortunate to be joined by the baritone Roderick Williams at the Kirker music evening, and are thrilled that Kirker is sponsoring our new exhibition programme as well as generously offering a cultural holiday to Madrid for this season’s Grand Draw. As you will have read in the Directors’ letter, Pallant House Gallery has been invited to be the museum partner at the London Art Fair in January, an exciting opportunity to showcase our collection to a London audience. Friends are invited to apply for 2-4-1 advance tickets to the fair – details can be found on page 50. I do hope that you enjoy our exhibition programme and will join us at some of the events. As always, thank you for your continued support of Pallant House Gallery. Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Chairman of the Friends
WHAT’S ON FRIENDS’ EVENTS Find the rest of the public programme including workshops in the What's On guide or online at www.pallant.org.uk To book telephone 01243 774557
British Self-Portraits: Highlights from the Ruth Borchard Collection Conscience and Conflict: British Friday 5 December, 11am Artists and the Spanish Civil War The first opportunity to find out Sat 8 November, 10-11 am more about Ruth Borchard and her This season’s Friends Private View (at important collection of British selfthe new time on Saturday mornings) portraits with gallery guides Ann will include a short introductory talk Hewat and Liz Walker by the Curator of the exhibition, £5.50 (£3 Student Friends) Simon Martin (Artistic Director of (includes refreshments) Pallant House Gallery). All Friends are welcome at this special preview event. Free (no booking required) (includes refreshments) PALLANT PROMS Sat 25 October 2014 Sat 29 November 2014 Sat 31 January 2015 Sat 28 February 2015 Conscience and Conflict: British Sat 28 March 2015 Artists and the Spanish Civil War The fifth year of our international Weds 12 November, 11am series of Pallant Proms piano ‘Conscience and Conflict: British recitals is now underway and the Artists and the Spanish Civil War’ concerts are proving as popular explores how British visual artists as ever. Outstanding musicians responded to the conflict and are provided for us by special includes European artists such as arrangement with the Royal College Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. A tour of Music, and are drawn from the for Friends will be conducted by one College’s prestigious postgraduate of our Gallery Guides. Recital Class. For more details £5.50 (£3 Student Friends) visit the Gallery website and look (includes refreshments) out for the leaflets in the foyer. £5.50 Friends free but voluntary contributions towards expenses will be appreciated. Capacity is limited so tickets must be obtained (preferably in advance of the day) from Reception.
Private View
Pallant Proms
Exhibition Tours
Art Book Club £5.50 (includes refreshments) Alison MacLeod: ‘Unexploded’ 2013 Sun 19 October 2.30–4pm A story of a family in war-time Brighton suffering the constant threat of invasion, amidst rumours of Hitler’s plans to take over Brighton Pavilion. This novel reflects the life and work of the Hans Feibusch paintings in the Gallery’s collection. George Orwell: ‘Homage to Catalonia’ (1938) Sun 23 November, 2.30–4pm To coincide with the Gallery’s main exhibition, this homage to the Spanish Civil War tells of Orwell’s personal experiences as a militiaman and brings ‘all the humanity, passion and clarity describing the intensity, the high hopes and the betrayals of that chaotic episode’. Kazuo Ishiguro: ‘An Artist of the Floating World’ (1986) Sun 18 January 2015, 2.30–4pm Following the Outside In exhibition entitled ‘Art from England and Japan’ held last year in the De’ Longhi Print Room, this novel produces a mirage with ideas and characters floating together. It is often considered alongside Ishiguro’s ‘The Remains of the Day’ (1989). Jonathan Smith: ‘Summer in February’ (1996) Sun 15 February, 2.30–4pm This book reflects the early 20th Century artists in the Gallery’s collection. When Alfred Munnings as President of the Royal Academy criticises modern art, he finds himself taken back to his youth in the Cornish Art Community. Inspired by a true story, the novel explores the tragedy that follows. Pallant House Gallery Friends 49
Hidden Treasures from the Printroom Tues 25 November, 10–11am Delve into the Gallery’s collection of modern and contemporary prints with the Assistant Curator and Collections Manager, focusing on artists’ portfolios such as War Drawings (1917) by Muirhead Bone, a portfolio of 60 lithographs originally published by the War Office in 1918 and featuring scenes from the Western Front. Norman Ackroyd’s The Western Shore (1987), a portfolio of 14 etchings resulting from three visits to Cork, Kerry, Clare and Galway on the South West coast of Ireland in 1986 and 1987, will also be presented. £6 (booking essential)
Events 2015 Preview Weds 10 December, 10–11am A unique opportunity to preview the 2015 programme and have your say about the talks and events scheduled for the forthcoming year. Free (no booking required (includes refreshments) Christmas Carol Concert Thurs 18 Dec, 6.30–8pm Join us for a festive evening of Christmas carols from local community choir The Penny Black Choir, followed by mince pies and mulled cider. £8 (booking essential)
Friends Offers Early Bird Christmas Shopping at Pallant House Gallery Bookshop Wednesday 12 November (all day) and Thursday 4 December (5–8pm) Pallant House Gallery Book shop is offering Friends 10% discount at two events in the run up to Christmas. Please show your Friends card to qualify for the discount. Offer applies to all products in the shop (excluding exhibition catalogue).
London Art Fair 2015 20–25 January 2015 Friends are invited to apply for 2-4-1 Behind the Scenes Talks: advance tickets for £14 plus booking Meet our Collections Manager fee, if booked before 31 December Weds 4 February, 10–11am 2014. Visit www.londonartfair.co.uk/ Introducing a series of talks by tickets and quote PALLANT in the members of Pallant House Gallery discount code box or contact the Fair staff to discover more about the inner on 020 7288 6736 quoting your workings of the Gallery. The first talk is Friends Membership Number. The by Sarah Norris, Collections Manager. offer applies to standard day tickets £5.50 (booking required) valid Weds 21 - Sun 25 January. (includes refreshments) A booking fee of £1.50 applies.
PATRONS OF THE GALLERY We are immensely grateful to the following Patrons of Pallant House Gallery, and to all those who wish to remain anonymous, for their generous support: Mrs Judy Addison Smith Keith Allison Lady Susan Anstruther John and Annoushka Ayton David and Elizabeth Benson Edward and Victoria Bonham Carter Vanessa Branson Ronnie and Margaret Brown Patrick K F Donlea Frank and Lorna Dunphy Lewis Golden Paul and Kay Goswell
Mr and Mrs Scott Greenhalgh Mr and Mrs Alan Hill Andrew Jones and Laura Hodgson James and Clare Kirkman Peter and Merle Lomas José and Michael Manser ra Keith and Deborah Mitchelson Robin Muir and Paul Lyon-Maris Angie O'Rourke Denise Patterson Simon and Harriet Patterson Catherine and Franck Petitgas
If you are interested in becoming a Patron of Pallant House Gallery please contact Helen Martin on 01243 770838 or h.martin@pallant.org.uk
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Pallant House Gallery Friends
Charles Rolls and Jans Ondaatje Rolls Mr and Mrs David Russell Sophie and David Shalit Tania Slowe and Paddy Walker John and Fiona Smythe Tim and Judith Wise John Young André Zlattinger
Enjoy a day out at Watts Gallery, an Artists’ Village Historic Gallery • Chapel • Artists’ Home & Studio • Tea Shop • Gift Shop • Gardens
Watts Gallery’s acclaimed exhibition programme includes Ellen Terry: The Painter’s Actress (closes 9 November 2014) followed by A Russian Fairytale: The Art and Craft of Elena Polenova (18 November 2014 - 8 February 2015) Watts Gallery, Down Lane, Compton, Guildford, Surrey, GU3 1DQ 01483 810235 / info@wattsgallery.org.uk / www.wattsgallery.org.uk
Significant Walks Otter Gallery, 21 November 2014 - 16 January 2015 Combining art and science, Significant Walks explores how visual art can manifest the significance of movement through particular environments. The project explores the reality of living with chronic lower back pain, seen through the video and biomechanical data of participants who have identified a walk that has a special significance to them. Otter Gallery University of Chichester College Lane Chichester PO19 6PE 01243 816098 For opening times visit www.chi.ac.uk/ottergallery Free admission
A LEGACY TO ART Pallant House Gallery is honoured to have received four legacies during the last year. Head of Development, Elaine Bentley, offers some advice on legacy giving.
Ivon Hitchens, Distant Hills, Light on Dark & Dark through Light, 1968, Oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery (Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council, 1985) © Estate of Artist
The trustees and staff are incredibly grateful to those generous individuals who chose to remember the Gallery in their wills this past year. As our running costs increase year on year, legacies are an increasingly important source of funding for us, as well as an ever more attractive way of giving for benefactors. They are paid into our endowment fund to secure the future of the Gallery in perpetuity. Until 30 June 2016 all legacies will be matched pound for pound with a grant from the HLF Catalyst Endowment Fund. ‘It is now more important than ever that individuals make provisions to support the arts – a legacy is an easy way to help secure the future of a place that is an asset to the arts. For me Pallant House Gallery is an amazing example of that.’ A Patron of the Gallery Legacy giving now has tax advantages thanks to a new government initiative. By leaving at least 10% of your estate to charity, the rate of Inheritance Tax applicable to the rest of your estate is reduced to 36%.
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Due to recent increases in property prices alone, more estates are becoming eligible for Inheritance Tax. This can, however, be addressed by establishing appropriate wills which include charities as beneficiaries, as no Inheritance Tax is payable on any amount bequeathed to registered charities such as Pallant House Gallery. Regular reviews with solicitors to ensure your estate is administered in the way you see fit is certainly something we would encourage, to ensure family, friends and chosen charities are remembered in accordance with your wishes, as well as to ensure your will complies with new laws and changes of circumstance. Assuring a will is in place in the first place prevents the state from deciding who inherits, an outcome that may not be desirable. A new Legacy leaflet is enclosed with this magazine. If you would like to discuss leaving a legacy to Pallant House Gallery, contact Elaine Bentley in complete confidence on 01243 770844 and e.bentley@pallant.org.uk
WHAT'S ON GALLERY EVENTS Find the complete public programme of talks, events and workshops in the What's On guide or online at www.pallant.org.uk To book telephone 01243 774557
TALKS AND PERFORMANCES All talks £9, Friends 7.50, Students £8 (unless otherwise stated) British Artists and the Spanish Civil War Thursday 20 November, 6pm In the 1930s artists working in every style - including the Bloomsbury Group, the Surrealists and even abstract artists - were inspired by the Spanish Civil War to create paintings, sculptures, posters, banners and even to volunteer to fight. Curator of the exhibition Simon Martin tells the story of how a generation of British artists including Henry Moore, Roland Penrose, Wyndham Lewis, and Barbara Hepworth responded to the conflict.
Guernica: Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon Thurs 27 November, 6pm Painted in 1937 in response to the aerial bombing of civilians, Picasso’s Guernica is a masterpiece that, from its birth out of war and violence, became known worldwide as a symbolic cry for peace. Writer and historian Gijs Van Hensbergen traces the history of this iconic painting including the fascinating story of how it came to Britain in 1938. I am Spain: The Men and Women who went to Fight Fascism Thurs 4 December, 6pm George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, John Dos Passos, Felicia Browne, John Cornford, Stephen Spender... These were just some of the talented, committed and adventure-hungry men and women who travelled to Spain to join the struggle against General Franco’s fascist rebellion. Through their personal letters, diaries and memoirs, David Boyd Haycock, author of A Crisis of Brilliance (2009), brings the experiences of these remarkable individuals to life. Followed by a wine reception and book signing supported by Old Street Publishing.
Prints and Poetry: Terry Frost and Federico García Lorca Thurs 11 December, 6pm The St Ives artist Sir Terry Frost RA (1915-2003) was amongst the most important post-war British printmakers. Dominic Kemp, author of the Terry Frost: Prints (Lund Humphries, 2010), considers the artist’s prints and his engagement with the poetry of the acclaimed Spanish writer Federico García Lorca, who was killed during the early fascist uprisings of the Spanish Civil War. Followed by a wine reception and book signing supported by Lund Humphries. DORA versus PICASSO Thurs 15 January, 6pm A staged poetic dialogue between Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar, his muse/mistress and acclaimed Surrealist photographer in her own right whose face is behind his iconic painting Weeping Woman (1937). Written by award-winning poet, Grace Nichols, this presentation explores the shifting emotions between Dora Maar and Picasso against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War as well as the wider cross-cultural influence of African art on Picasso and the Cubist movement. Nichols’ illuminating text in conjunction with music and African masks, makes for an engaging multi-media experience. Directed by Mark Hewitt. £12
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WHAT'S ON GALLERY EVENTS Find the rest of the public programme including workshops in the What's On guide or online at www.pallant.org.uk To book telephone 01243 774557
The Self-Portrait: A Cultural History Thurs 29 January, 6pm To coincide with the exhibition of the Ruth Borchard Collection of British Self-Portraits, author of a new history of self-portraiture James Hall explores the story of this popular and humane art form, considering the confessional self-portraits of Titian and Michelangelo, the role of biography for serial self-portraitists such as Courbet and van Gogh, themes of sex and genius in works by Munch and Bonnard, and the latest developments in our globalized age. Followed by a wine reception and a book signing supported by Thames & Hudson.
Unlikely Warriors: The Extraordinary Story of the Britons who fought for Spain Sat 14 February, 3pm Appalled at the prospect of another European democracy succumbing to fascism, more than 2500 men and women from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth flocked to Spain’s aid in the late 1930s. From their struggle against the Blackshirts in the ‘hungry thirties’, to the fall of the Nazis’ Third Reich in 1945, historian and writer Richard Baxell follows a band of ordinary men and women who made an extraordinary choice by volunteering to join the International Brigades.
Poetry of the Spanish Civil War Thurs 12 February, 6pm Stephen Spender described the Spanish Civil War as ‘the Poet’s War’ reflecting on its inspiration to the likes of WH Auden, David Gascoyne, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Federico García Lorca and Pablo Neruda. Professor Valentine Cunningham, author of the Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse, introduces a recital by actor Hugh Ross (of Iron Lady and Trainspotting fame) of some of the most memorable and moving poetry of the Spanish Civil War. £12 Followed by a wine reception supported by the University of Chichester Department of English and Creative Writing
Eye of the Needle: The Textile Art of Alice Kettle Thurs 19 February, 6pm The latest contemporary artist to present their work in the atmospheric setting of the 18th century interior of Pallant House, Alice Kettle is one of Britain’s most exciting textile artists. In this artist’s talk she provides a personal insight into her painterly stitched textiles, discussing her distinctive techniques, and the development of her imagery and work.
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TOURS Conscience and Conflict: British Artists and the Spanish Civil War Fri 28 November, 11am Sat 17 January, 3pm Gallery Guide Beth Funnell leads a tour of the exhibition which focuses on the impact of the Spanish Civil War on a diverse range of British visual artists including Edward Burra, Wyndham Lewis, Henry Moore and John Armstrong. £5.50 (£3 students) British Self-Portraits: Highlights from the Ruth Borchard Collection Thurs 22 January, 6pm Gallery guides Anne Hewat and Liz Walker explore the fascinating stories behind Ruth Borchard’s collection of British self-portraits which features artists such as Michael Ayrton, Ithell Colquhoun, Jean Cooke, Peter Phillips and David Tindle. £5.50 (£3 students) Gallery Tours Every Sat and Sun, 2pm A half-hour guided tour providing fascinating insights into our collections and displays. Whether exploring themes such as portraits or landscape, or telling the stories behind particular artworks, each week will be different. Free with entrance ticket, meet at Reception.
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K I R K E R HOL I D AY S F O R D I S C E R N I N G T R AV E L L E R S Madrid
The Spanish Civil War had a profound emotional and psychological impact on the country, especially in Madrid, one of the last cities to be taken by the Nationalists.Today this lively, cosmopolitan city is one of the world’s art centres, and visitors can still see a number of evocative and fascinating reminders of the conflict – from Picasso’s masterpiece ‘Guernica’ in the Reina Sofia Museum to Franco’s ‘Valley of the Fallen’ just outside the city.
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Guernica, 1937 Picasso
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THE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS MOSCOW CITY BALLET TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD LOVE, LOSS AND CHIANTI THE KING’S SPEECH BOUNCERS THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS JEEVES AND WOOSTER CHILDREN’S SHOWS ART, COMEDY, MUSIC AND MORE
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BOOKSHOP pallantbookshop.com shop@pallantbookshop.com Telephone 01243 781293
BOOKS CONSCIENCE AND CONFLICT: BRITISH ARTISTS AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR This beautifully illustrated official catalogue is an ideal companion to the Gallery’s main exhibition this season, exploring the artistic response of British artists to the Spanish Civil War. (£24.99)
PRODUCTS INSPIRED BY TERRY FROST To coincide with the Terry Frost exhibition in the De’Longhi Print Room, a range of products is available including original Terry Frost prints, mobiles, greetings cards, notecard wallets and Christmas card packs. (Boxed mobile £35)
CARRY ACKROYD CHRISTMAS CARDS Following last year’s popular calendar ‘Happy Spirit’, the Bookshop has commissioned Carry Akroyd to design this year’s Christmas card (shown below); a beautiful linocut with colourwash entitled ‘Snow on the Fields’. (Packs of six cards £5*) Carry’s original linocut and silkscreen prints are also available to buy from the shop or online (from £90).*A donation from the sale of each pack will go to St. Wilfrid’s Hospice.
TERRY FROST PRINTS: A CATALOGUE RAISONNE BY DOMINIC KEMP Dominic Kemp will be giving a talk at the Gallery on 11 December, 6pm, followed by a book signing in the Garden Gallery. (Special exhibition price £45)
TERRY FROST: A PAINTER’S LIFE BY ROGER BRISTOW Published to coincide with the tenth anniversary of Frost’s death, this first full-length hardback biography traces his life from a working-class upbringing in the Midlands, the struggle of his early years in St Ives, his time at the Camberwell School of Art and the move from early representational work to the abstraction that became his creative hallmark. (£30)
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RA CHRISTMAS CARDS Royal Academy Christmas Cards are stocked again this year featuring many popular Royal Academicians. (Packs of six cards from £4.75).
BACK IN STOCK! SUSIE MACMURRAY SILVER-PLATED MUSSELS Limited edition Susie MacMurray silver-plated mussel shells with silk velvet insides, first made available to coincide with MacMurray’s ‘Shell’ installation at the Gallery in 2006. MacMurray has recently exhibited in London and New York and is working on a new exhibition 'Clouds' at The Guildhall in Winchester in 2015. (Silver Shell boxed, signed and editioned £250)
GIFT IDEAS
SUE TIMNEY FOR WEST DEAN We are now stocking an exciting new collection by award-winning contemporary Surrealist designer, Sue Timney, designed for West Dean to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Edward James Foundation. The range of ceramics, silk cushions & scarves, stationary, aprons and bags, features two designs (Surreal Floral and Turtle) inspired by Edward James, his home and collection of Surrealist art and objects.
ANGELA HARDING TEA TOWELS Inspired by the British countryside and the love of the printed line, Angela Harding’s new range of 100% cotton tea towels (£12) accompany a selection of her original prints (from £130).
ERIC RAVILIOUS BONE CHINA MUGS New this year, Wedgwood bone china mugs featuring six original Eric Ravilious designs: Travel, Garden, Afternoon Tea, Continents, Alphabet Blue and Alphabet Pink. (£18 each) Ravilious ‘High Street’ prints, Christmas cards, and a 2015 calendar are also available.
DESIGNER JEWELLERY Just in time for Christmas, exclusive ranges by British designers Claire van Holthe and Pip Portley. Claire works in 9 carat gold and incorporates stunning fresh water pearls and precious stones, while Pip collaborates with traditional Indian craftsmen to produce contemporary designs in sterling silver and gold leaf with precious and semi-precious gems. (From £20) All book titles and products are available to buy online at www.pallantbookshop.com. We offer free delivery on web orders over £100. For enquiries please call 01243 781293 During December in the lead up to Christmas, Pallant House Gallery Bookshop will be open on Mondays 11am-3pm in addition to usual Gallery opening times. Late night shopping on Thursdays until 8pm.
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Artwork in Focus: Figure (Walnut), 1964 by Barbara Hepworth Barbara Hepworth’s Figure (Walnut) (1964) arrived recently at the Gallery as a new long-term loan from the Hepworth Estate, joining two further Hepworth sculptures, the black marble Single Form, Nocturne (1968), and the painted bronze Two Forms with White (Greek) (1969). An extract from an essay by Chris Stephens, Head of Displays and Lead Curator of Modern British Art at Tate Britain, traces the development of the ‘Single Form’ theme in Hepworth’s sculpture and explores how direct carving, her chosen method, was key to the modernisation of sculpture. Citing Michelangelo as a precedent, early in the twentieth century artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Jacob Epstein pioneered a return to the artist’s carving of wood and stone. Their solitary labour in the studio was a key aspect of the identity of the modern sculptor, and the relationship between their chosen material and the form and content of the final sculpture was crucial to the modernism of the work. With her close friend Henry Moore and first husband John Skeaping, Barbara Hepworth was one of the leading inheritors of direct carving in Britain. She said in her earliest published statement: ‘Carving to me is more interesting than modelling because there is a limited variety of materials from which to draw inspiration. Each material demands a particular treatment and there are an infinite number of subjects in life, each to be re-created in a particular material. In fact, it would be possible to carve the same subject in a different stone each time, throughout life, without a repetition of form.’ As with stone, Hepworth preferred hard woods that offered more resistance to her chisel. In contrast to the complex tunnelling through of Henry Moore’s elm reclining figures, her sculptures seem to take their point of departure from the simple verticality of the log. The relationship between the figure and the inherent verticality reached its apogee with Hepworth’s Single Form sculptures during the 1930s. These were the highpoint of her quest for a pure, abstract sculpture though she later identified them as highly simplified torsos. They rise from a narrow base, gradually 60
Barbara Hepworth, Figure (Walnut), Wood on painted wood base, On Loan from the Hepworth Estate (2014) © Bowness, Hepworth Estate
broadening out until tapering slightly towards a flat top. The fronts are slightly curved, while the backs project (so that the sculptures are roughly triangular in plan) and then they too taper towards the top. For a British viewer, the suggestion of a cricket bat is inescapable. These works are subtly asymmetrical and a similar organic irregularity could be seen in other pieces of the same period. It was with the wooden sculptures of the 1940s that Hepworth took one of her most significant steps, technically as well as aesthetically. In the planewood Oval Sculpture (1943), she converted the log into a simple, totally abstract shape and tunnelled through the solid timber so that several cavities come together to open out a single interior space. The inner faces were painted with an opaque, hard white paint to accentuate the contrast between the outer surface of the wood and the space that had been opened up within. The tension between the inside and outside, surface and mass of the sculpture became a key characteristic of Hepworth’s art. It informed her work in stone and bronze but it was the potentialities of wood which first allowed her to explore this idea to its extreme. Figure (Walnut) (1964) is on display in the stairwell of the contemporary wing. It is Artwork of the Month in January, where there will be a free talk and a creative workshop. A retrospective of Barbara Hepworth’s work will be at Tate Britain 24 June 2015–25 October 2015.
NOA
The National Open Art Exhibition After 5 successful weeks at Somerset House, London the NOA Exhibition showing
the winning works tours to:
Pallant House Gallery Chichester PO19 1TJ Dec 2nd – Dec 14 2014 The Minerva Theatre Gallery Chichester Festival Theatre Chichester PO19 6AP 17 Dec 2014 – Jan 3 2015 Works on Paper Fair The Science Museum London SW7 2DD Feb 5 – 9 2015
ALL WORKS FOR SALE www.thenationalopenartcompetition.com Detail: Mackie - Autumn Rhythm Sponsored by Towry, the Wealth Adviser
Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale
Viewing 16–19 November 8 King Street London SW1Y 6QT
London, King Street · 19 November 2014
Contact André Zlattinger azlattinger@christies.com +44 (0) 20 7389 2074
© THE ESTATE OF THE ARTIST
EUAN UGLOW (1932–2000)
Three in One oil on canvas 36 x 56 in. (91.5 x 141.2 cm.) Painted in 1967–1968 £500,000–800,000
The Art People christies.com