Ben Nicholson

H.S.Ede, and thence by descent
Sale, Christie's London, 22 November 2002, lot 91
Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, London, whence acquired by the present owner

The work appears to be in lovely original condition. A hairline crack to the paint surface running vertically down the edge of the raised left-hand plane seems to be entirely characteristic with a relief carving of this sort and does not seem to have resulted in any instability. Inspection under UV light reveals several minute specks of possible retouching in a small circular area centre right, just above the carved aperture. Beautifully presented within a painted box frame in good sound condition. Ready for the wall. Please note that the catalogue illustration is larger than life size and that the wood of the painted frame is far less red in tone in the original.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The increasing abstraction of Nicholson’s work in the 1932-33 period seems to have drawn on a variety of sources. Having separated from his first wife, Winifred, Nicholson was by March 1932 living in Hampstead where he became increasingly involved in modernist circles and in December that year, visited Paris. Although Ben was already a member of the Association Abstraction-Creation, Winifred’s Parisian connections provided Nicholson with a vital entré into the city’s avant-garde circles, and certain influences began to become noticeable in his work, especially that of Miro whose example showed Nicholson a path by which he could begin to free his work from external representative references. Throughout 1933 we see him treating the support increasingly as an important part of the work, and numerous works of that year are heavily incised. The first relief, December 1933 (first completed relief) (Private Collection) was completed in Paris, and further works were created into the new year of 1934. The first white relief was made in February 1934 and the earliest examples, such as the present work, are notable for their wonderfully hand-made feel and with some painted reliefs, appear to form a group of physically small pieces, such as 1934 (relief) (Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge) and 1934 (5 circles) (Private Collection).

Whilst the importance of the white reliefs, not only for Nicholson but also for the course of abstraction in Britain, is fully accepted, it is worth considering just how revolutionary these pieces appeared to his contemporaries. The first showing was of Two Circles at the 7 & 5 exhibition in March 1934, and even amongst friends and supporters, their radical nature was considered challenging. Ivon Hitchens, who was a key artist supporter of Nicholson (his lucid explanation of Ben’s work to Helen Sutherland was recounted at length in her diaries), remarked that ‘this was surely going too far’ (Ben Nicholson, letter to Charles Harrison 11^th February 1967 (TGA))(although he soon came round to admire them) and many critics seemed to have regarded them with astonishment, if not ridicule. Paul Nash however stood out as a supporter, seeing in them ‘the discovery of a new world’ (Paul Nash, ‘Ben Nicholson’s Carved Reliefs’, Architectural Review, vo.LXXVIII, no.467, October 1935 pp.142-3). 

However, the present work is also remarkable for the fact that it is pierced through, and therefore not only is it amongst the earliest of the white reliefs but also sits at the centre of the debate current in sculpture at the time regarding the non-representational piercing of forms. By the time that Relief -1934 was made, Nicholson’s relationship with Barbara Hepworth was well-established and the use of piercing in her sculpture was a noted feature of her work. Her watershed work, Pierced Form (Destroyed) of 1931 possibly predates the use of a similar technique by Henry Moore by about a year, but most importantly it allowed Hepworth to abolish the concept of a closed, and therefore finite, form and bring each piece firmly into the environment within which it was placed. By piercing the relief, Nicholson may be experimenting with a similar concept, as the relief would thus include any colour from a wall or surface upon which it was placed. The this use of colour within otherwise monochrome work is current within Nicholson’s work at this time, although to introduce it in this way through the actual work is an extremely rare usage, if not unique.