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Lot Essay
We are very grateful to Rachel Smith and Lee Beard for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.
July 1960 (back to back) is a stunning example of a carved relief, the approach to abstraction for which Ben Nicholson is perhaps best remembered. Nicholson’s first relief was made in Paris in December 1933. He expressed his excitement over his new discovery in a letter to Barbara Hepworth on 12 December 1933: 'I did a very amusing thing yesterday. I carved it all day long it is about the size of a sheet of notepaper & looks like a primitive game' (quoted in exhibition catalogue, Ben Nicholson, Tate Gallery, London, 1993, p. 216). Early influences in Paris at the time include Miró, in particular an abstract by the Spanish artist which was the 'first free painting' Nicholson had seen.
Nicholson would return to the medium of the painted relief in the 1950s after a brief interval. He moved, with his wife Felicitas Vogler, from St Ives to Ticino in Southern Switzerland in 1958, where they built a house high up above Lake Maggiore. This location and the mountainous landscape greatly impressed Nicholson, and seemed to occasion a change in his work. The texture of Nicholson's works at this time are complex, with areas of scraped down oil and variations in the layers of the paint. In the present work, two forms, mirror images of each other, are held perfectly in balance, offset with the subtle palette of neutral tones synonymous with Nicholson’s work from this period.
Peter Khoroche writes, 'In these later reliefs we see Nicholson constantly exploring and developing the potentialities of colour and texture just as much as form. It is as if all the subtle gradations of colour, tone and texture that he registered while drawing landscape and architecture were stored away, later to find expression in his carved surfaces …. These formal and technical developments go hand in hand with Nicholson's expanding range of motifs and with his desire to make his work as inclusive a response to life as possible' (exhibition catalogue, Ben Nicholson 'chasing out something alive' drawings and painted reliefs 1950-75, Cambridge, Kettle's Yard, 2002, p. 26).
Painted in 1960, July 1960 (back to back) was conceived following one of the artist’s most prolific and successful periods. In 1951 Nicholson was invited to exhibit at the Festival of Britain, in 1954 at the XXVII Venice Biennale, where he was awarded the Ulisse prize, followed by a major retrospective of his work at the Tate Gallery in London and the Stedelijk in Amsterdam. In 1956 Nicholson was awarded the Guggenheim International Painting prize for August 1956 (Val d’Orcia) and a year later won 1st prize for painting at the IV São Paulo Biennal. Nicholson also enjoyed a close relationship with the British Council, which under the leadership of Lilian Somerville and Herbert Read helped promote his work both at home and abroad. His work was represented in 40 exhibitions organised by the British Council between 1947 and 1960, successfully establishing Nicholson as one of the greatest and most innovative 20th Century British artists.
July 1960 (back to back) is a stunning example of a carved relief, the approach to abstraction for which Ben Nicholson is perhaps best remembered. Nicholson’s first relief was made in Paris in December 1933. He expressed his excitement over his new discovery in a letter to Barbara Hepworth on 12 December 1933: 'I did a very amusing thing yesterday. I carved it all day long it is about the size of a sheet of notepaper & looks like a primitive game' (quoted in exhibition catalogue, Ben Nicholson, Tate Gallery, London, 1993, p. 216). Early influences in Paris at the time include Miró, in particular an abstract by the Spanish artist which was the 'first free painting' Nicholson had seen.
Nicholson would return to the medium of the painted relief in the 1950s after a brief interval. He moved, with his wife Felicitas Vogler, from St Ives to Ticino in Southern Switzerland in 1958, where they built a house high up above Lake Maggiore. This location and the mountainous landscape greatly impressed Nicholson, and seemed to occasion a change in his work. The texture of Nicholson's works at this time are complex, with areas of scraped down oil and variations in the layers of the paint. In the present work, two forms, mirror images of each other, are held perfectly in balance, offset with the subtle palette of neutral tones synonymous with Nicholson’s work from this period.
Peter Khoroche writes, 'In these later reliefs we see Nicholson constantly exploring and developing the potentialities of colour and texture just as much as form. It is as if all the subtle gradations of colour, tone and texture that he registered while drawing landscape and architecture were stored away, later to find expression in his carved surfaces …. These formal and technical developments go hand in hand with Nicholson's expanding range of motifs and with his desire to make his work as inclusive a response to life as possible' (exhibition catalogue, Ben Nicholson 'chasing out something alive' drawings and painted reliefs 1950-75, Cambridge, Kettle's Yard, 2002, p. 26).
Painted in 1960, July 1960 (back to back) was conceived following one of the artist’s most prolific and successful periods. In 1951 Nicholson was invited to exhibit at the Festival of Britain, in 1954 at the XXVII Venice Biennale, where he was awarded the Ulisse prize, followed by a major retrospective of his work at the Tate Gallery in London and the Stedelijk in Amsterdam. In 1956 Nicholson was awarded the Guggenheim International Painting prize for August 1956 (Val d’Orcia) and a year later won 1st prize for painting at the IV São Paulo Biennal. Nicholson also enjoyed a close relationship with the British Council, which under the leadership of Lilian Somerville and Herbert Read helped promote his work both at home and abroad. His work was represented in 40 exhibitions organised by the British Council between 1947 and 1960, successfully establishing Nicholson as one of the greatest and most innovative 20th Century British artists.