.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
The Blitz had begun in earnest in London in the spring of 1941, and on 19 March the Luftwaffe's heavy raid of incendiary bombs targeted dock installations along the length of the Thames. Areas of East London well-known and loved by Minton were particularly hard hit. The resulting damaged buildings in Wapping, Rotherhithe, and Minton's favourite area, Poplar, provided him with ample subject matter: war had created a type of landscape that had previously existed only in his imagination.
Typifying his work of this period, the urban decay and damaged buildings are seen from an elevated viewpoint, looking down into abandoned rooms and streets. In this work, devoid of human figures, Minton presents a nightmarish and apocalyptic vision of inner London. As Frances Spalding notes, 'The pen-and-ink drawings and paintings he produced [at this time] sing the desolation of war. Though they evolved out of actual experience, he was not concerned with topographical accuracy, but with using what he saw to create a theatre of the soul, an arena in which to explore Kafkaesque feelings of wretchedness, guilt and alienation' (F. Spalding, Dance till the Stars Come Down, A Biography of John Minton, Sevenoaks, 1991, p. 40). Comparable works are in the Imperial War Museum; and the British Museum.
It seems likely that this work is dedicated to Eileen Elizabeth Jefford (later Bell), a fellow student of Minton's at St John's Wood School of Art in the 1930s. Bell recalled how her fellow students Minton and Michael Ayrton were: "very much admired by me, Minton especially, and miles above my head".
Typifying his work of this period, the urban decay and damaged buildings are seen from an elevated viewpoint, looking down into abandoned rooms and streets. In this work, devoid of human figures, Minton presents a nightmarish and apocalyptic vision of inner London. As Frances Spalding notes, 'The pen-and-ink drawings and paintings he produced [at this time] sing the desolation of war. Though they evolved out of actual experience, he was not concerned with topographical accuracy, but with using what he saw to create a theatre of the soul, an arena in which to explore Kafkaesque feelings of wretchedness, guilt and alienation' (F. Spalding, Dance till the Stars Come Down, A Biography of John Minton, Sevenoaks, 1991, p. 40). Comparable works are in the Imperial War Museum; and the British Museum.
It seems likely that this work is dedicated to Eileen Elizabeth Jefford (later Bell), a fellow student of Minton's at St John's Wood School of Art in the 1930s. Bell recalled how her fellow students Minton and Michael Ayrton were: "very much admired by me, Minton especially, and miles above my head".