Ben Nicholson, O.M.

Galerie Georges Moos, Geneva, by 1974
Private Collection, Geneva
Crane Kalman Gallery, London

Geneva, Galerie Georges Moos, Ben Nicholson, Oeuvre 1932 a 1972, 1974, no. 9

Very good condition; original artist's painted mount shows some slight staining along outer edges and some possible rubbing or staining at lower and right inner edges
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During the 1930s, Nicholson had built up an important network of connections within the European avant-garde, particularly in Paris, and the isolation of the war years saw a move in his work away from the pure abstraction he had been pursuing towards a more landscape-influenced style. However, after the end of the war, his style became increasingly abstract once more, this time working within a deconstructed still-life idiom. July 1955 (HB Silver) dates from this prolific and extraordinarily modern period for the artist.

Norbert Lynton writes of these still-lifes and their relation to the works that had come before, "It is striking that in many of the major paintings of the early to mid-1950s, BN's still life has to exist without the partnering landscape he had accustomed us to. The near/far duality is not ... replaced by an unambiguous interior setting, concentrating all spatial action on what is on the table and its relation to the unified background, but usually by something much less specific. Our attention is sought first by the play of lines that represent the still life, secondly by the supporting planes that were the table, and only thirdly by the wider setting and its implications of space and location. Each element has surrendered the major part of what made it recognizable, and thus these still life compositions strike one as abstract, though their mode of abstraction is utterly different from that of the white reliefs" (Norbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, London, 1993, p. 252).