Etching
Edition 3/50
Sheet: 27 x 38cm
38 x 49cm (framed)

Signed and numbered 3/50

Provenance:
Gilden Arts, Hampstead, London, 2009, where purchased by the present owner

Benjamin Nicholson (1894 – 1982) was an English painter of abstract compositions (sometimes in low relief), landscapes, and still-life. He was one of the leading promoters of abstract art in England. In London, Nicholson met the sculptors Barbara Hepworth (to whom he was married from 1938 to 1951) and Henry Moore. On visits to Paris, he met Mondrian, whose work in the neoplastic style was to influence him in an abstract direction, and Picasso, whose cubism would also find its way into his work. In Paris in 1933, he made his first wood relief, White Relief, which contained only right angles and circles. In 1937, he was one of the editors of Circle, an influential monograph on constructivism. He believed that abstract art should be enjoyed by the general public, as shown by the Nicholson Wall, a mural he created for the garden of Sutton Place in Guildford, Surrey. Nicholson moved to St Ives in 1939. He won the prestigious Carnegie Prize in 1952 and in 1955 a retrospective exhibition of his work was shown at the Tate Gallery in London. In 1956, he won the first Guggenheim International painting prize and in 1957 the international prize for painting at the Sao Paulo Art Biennial.

Messums Estimate:
£5000 – £7000

Messums Art Market says: The top price at auction for a work from the edition is £11,250 achieved in 2019

Price inclusive of ARR