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Lot Essay
Carved in 1936, the present work is one of the most totemic and consequently most sculptural of the white reliefs Nicholson made in the 1930s. It was included in the pivotal 1936 Oxford exhibition Abstract & Concrete (fig. 1), the first international exhibition of abstract art in Britain and a key exhibition for the movement, and was retained in the Artist's possesion until 1956 when it was acquired by Nicholson's London dealers Gimpel Fils.
Nicholson's first white reliefs were made in 1934, and were exhibited in the Unit One London exhibition in April that year. They were freely carved, irregular shapes, requiring a process of profound thought and concentration, persisting through the long, and wearisome handywork demanded to cut, dig, fill, smoothe and texture the forms (fig. 2). Herbert Reid wrote of the white reliefs in Axis 2: 'The colour was in the depths. One depth against another gave the artist all the play of tonality he needed for his composition. A uniform surface paint of white or grey became the only necessary pigment'. Carved after Nicholson had begun to regularise his method of composition by using ruler and compass, the present work relies on light and shade for surface effects.
Norbert Lynton, in his study of Nicholson's life, has cited the present work as 'one of the most powerful white reliefs...like a stone monument it steps back twice as we read our way up it; it is strongest at the bottom, where a monument would meet the ground. The upper half has a base rectangle which is seen only as a margin on the right and at the top. On it is a rectangle which steps forward to become the main feature; a vertical area with a circle hollowed out of it, perhaps revealing the plane of the base rectangle' (Lynton, 1998, op. cit., p. 83).
Nicholson's first white reliefs were made in 1934, and were exhibited in the Unit One London exhibition in April that year. They were freely carved, irregular shapes, requiring a process of profound thought and concentration, persisting through the long, and wearisome handywork demanded to cut, dig, fill, smoothe and texture the forms (fig. 2). Herbert Reid wrote of the white reliefs in Axis 2: 'The colour was in the depths. One depth against another gave the artist all the play of tonality he needed for his composition. A uniform surface paint of white or grey became the only necessary pigment'. Carved after Nicholson had begun to regularise his method of composition by using ruler and compass, the present work relies on light and shade for surface effects.
Norbert Lynton, in his study of Nicholson's life, has cited the present work as 'one of the most powerful white reliefs...like a stone monument it steps back twice as we read our way up it; it is strongest at the bottom, where a monument would meet the ground. The upper half has a base rectangle which is seen only as a margin on the right and at the top. On it is a rectangle which steps forward to become the main feature; a vertical area with a circle hollowed out of it, perhaps revealing the plane of the base rectangle' (Lynton, 1998, op. cit., p. 83).