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• Auction House:
  Theodore Bruce
• Sale Name:
  Timed Online Auction | Art | Interesting & Affordable
• Sale Date:
  16 Oct 2023 ~ 11am (AEDT)
• Lot #:
  6513
• Lot Description:
  St Ives School
  (Britain)
  Old Farm, Bowjewyan, From Above (Memory)
  Pastel on paper
  27.2 x 19 cm Frame: 42 x 34 cm
  Possibly initialled lower right (beneath matt); Remnants of artist label verso
• Notes:
  The ancient village of Bojewyan, is just outside St Just in Cornwall. George Peter Lanyon (8 February 1918 - 31 August 1964) was a British painter of landscapes leaning heavily towards abstraction. Lanyon was one of the most important artists to emerge in post-war Britain. Despite his early death at the age of forty-six he achieved a body of work that is amongst the most original and important reappraisals of modernism in painting to be found anywhere. Combining abstract values with radical ideas about landscape and the figure, Lanyon navigated a course from Constructivism through Abstract Expressionism to a style close to Pop. He also made constructions, pottery and collage. Lanyon was fortunate to have roots in an area that had, as a result of the onset of war, become one of the main centres of British avant-garde art, with its hub in St Ives. Having briefly attended art schools in Penzance and then the Euston Road School, Lanyon was also fortunate to be taken under the wing of Ben Nicholson, who had moved to the coastal town with his wife, Barbara Hepworth, in 1939. Lanyon's visual education was interrupted, however, by the outbreak of hostilities, and he served in the RAF for the duration of the Second World War. There is a sense of urgency and an emphasis on sensation that give his paintings an immense charge, a quality no doubt heightened by the experiences and situations encountered while on active service. Most importantly, there is an understanding of the landscape as if from the air (in 1959 he became a gliding enthusiast). Nicholson had taught Lanyon how to think abstractly in terms of space and form, and how to imbue these with ideas. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, whilst the paintings of St Ives by Nicholson had a certain classical thinness, Lanyon's resonated a rich energy. During this time, he was starting to see the work of the American Abstract Expressionists, including the mature Willem de Kooning at the Venice Biennale of 1950 and later Jackson Pollock's One (No. 31) (1950)(3) when it was shown at the ICA in 1953. Andrew Causey has described how Lanyon was able to reinvent him¨self.(4) His introduction to prominent New York artists (he later met Rothko in 1957) undoubtedly opened new possi¨bilities and freedoms in his work, and led to four solo shows there. Lanyon took up gliding as a pastime and used the resulting experience extensively in his paintings. He died in Taunton, Somerset, as the result of injuries received in a gliding accident and is buried in St. Uny's Church, Lelant. In September 2010 Peter Lanyon's work was honoured with a large-scale retrospective exhibition: Peter Lanyon 9 October 2010 - 23 January 2011 at Tate St Ives. Curated by Chris Stephens, Head of Displays and Curator of Modern British Art at Tate Britain, it was the first thorough museum retrospective for almost forty years. In 2015 Lanyon's Gliding Paintings were shown as a set in the Soaring Flight exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, London. In 2018 the catalogue raisonné of Peter's oil paintings and three-dimensional works was published by Modern Art Press, after a decades work by Toby Treves. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/peter-lanyon-1467. http://visualarts.britishcouncil.org/collection/artists/lanyon-peter-1918/object/bojewyan-farms-lanyon-195152-p345
• Estimate:
  A$200 - 400
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.