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Ben Nicholson
Nicholson, Ben
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists
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2003
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© The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists 2003, originally published by Oxford University Press 2003. (Hide copyright information)
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Nicholson, Ben (1894–1982). British painter and maker of
reliefs, one of his country's most distinguished pioneers of abstract art. From his father, Sir William
Nicholson, he inherited a feeling for simple and fastidious still lifes, which with landscapes made up the bulk of his early work. They show him responding to the innovations of
Cubism, using the standard Cubist repertoire of objects such as jugs and glasses and arranging them as flat shapes on the picture plane. Nicholson was also influenced by the
naive painter
Alfred Wallis, whose work he discovered in 1928 and whose roughly textured surfaces he emulated. From the early 1930s he turned to abstraction, partly because of the influence of
Barbara Hepworth (they shared a studio from 1932 and married in 1938) and partly because of the impact of several visits he made to Paris at this time. He joined the
Abstraction-Création association in 1933 and became friendly with several leading avant-garde artists,
Mondrian's work in particular coming as a revelation to him. In 1933 he made his first abstract relief and in 1934 his first strictly geometrical ‘white relief’ in painted wood, using only straight lines and circles. Such works were the most uncompromising examples of abstract art made by a British artist up to that date (
White Relief, 1935, Tate, London). He also did paintings in a similar intellectual vein but with a poetic refinement of colour that offsets their severity of composition (
Painting, 1937, Tate). By this time Nicholson was recognized as being at the forefront of the modern movement in England. He was a member of
Unit One (1933), and one of the editors of
Circle (1937). In 1939 he and Hepworth moved to Cornwall, where they became the nucleus of the
St Ives School. They divorced in 1951 and in 1958 Nicholson settled in Switzerland with his third wife, the Swiss photographer Felicitas Vogler. After the Second World War he won an international reputation, accompanied by many awards. He returned to England in 1971. His late work moved freely between abstraction and figuration and included large, free-standing reliefs, notably one in marble in the garden of Sutton Place, Surrey (1982). Nicholson's first wife,
Winifred Nicholson (1893–1981), was a painter of distinction. She is best known for her flower paintings, but she also did other subjects and abstracts, all her work showing her joy in colour and light.
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 "The Evening Standard (London, England)")
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A colourful family; When Barbara Hepworth married Ben Nicholson, she sealed the Nicholson clan's fate as the first family of British art. And four generations of scandal, infighting and rivalry haven't diluted the artistic gene, discovers Godfrey Barker Right: Ben Nicholson with Barbara Hepworth on a boat in Henley in the early Thirties.
Newspaper article from: The Evening Standard (London, England); 10/29/2004; 700+ words
; ...BARKER In September 1935 the artist Ben Nicholson opened a show of all-white paintings...special pleasure to one man: Ben Nicholson's father, Sir William. The...matters, of course, because to Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth Britain owes...
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Arts: Follow that line Although the abstract works of Ben Nicholson have dropped out of fashion and no longer seem daring, says TOM LUBBOCK, an exhibition of his later drawings reveals a draughtsman of timeless ability
Newspaper article from: The Independent - London; 8/13/2002; ; 700+ words
; ...artist famous for his circles is Ben Nicholson. His paintings, drawings and...daring, now seems safe. And Nicholson's own art, once a byword for...almost kitsch. Can it be saved? "Ben Nicholson: drawings and painted reliefs...
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Hampstead's heyday Belsize Park was the place for artists in the 1930s. SARAH JANE CHECKLAND describes how Ben Nicholson and his contemporaries made London the avant-garde capital
Newspaper article from: Evening Standard - London; 6/21/2000; ; 700+ words
; ...of the British abstract artists Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hep-worth and Henry...gentle artists was all but empty. Ben Nicholson: the Vicious Circles of his Life...Murray at 25; an exhibition of Ben Nicholson's work opens at the Bernard...
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LIVING WILL THE ARTS: VISUAL ART THE ARTS: VISUAL ART A BEN NICHOLSON EXHIBITION BEGAN WITH A WIFE'S BEQUEST
Newspaper article from: The Sunday Herald; 2/24/2008; ; 700+ words
; ...have mattered had Vogler not spent 20 years married to Ben Nicholson, one of the most important artists of his generation...Modern Art in Edinburgh. "It said, 'I leave half my Ben Nicholson pictures to Edinburgh and half to the Kunsthalle Museum...
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The alphabet man The painter and printmaker William Nicholson has long been eclipsed by his more famous son, the abstract artist Ben. But in his time he was a man of substance: a celebrated society portraitist, friend of the great and good, he even taught Winston Churchill to paint.
Newspaper article from: The Independent on Sunday; 10/24/2004; ; 700+ words
; ...Beardsley burgeoned after their deaths, Nicholson's was not only partly buried but...totally eclipsed by that of his son Ben who, as Britain's most important...Tate, Alan Bowness, (himself Ben Nicholson's son-in-law), called him...
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Ben Nicholson, you are soooo dreamy. Omigod. He talked to us!
Newspaper article from: Concord Monitor; 9/11/2007; ; 700+ words
; ...going to put a paragraph here explaining who Ben Nicholson is and why we're writing about him, but we...ve ever eaten, mostly due to the presence of Ben Nicholson." And: "Although Ben does resemble Opie, Richie Cunningham and that...
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Concord High School senior class president Ben Nicholson says he and his friends have formed a philosophy about high school society. [Derived headline]
Newspaper article from: Concord Monitor; 4/9/2007; 700+ words
; ...High School senior class president Ben Nicholson says he and his friends have formed...philosophy about high school society. Nicholson will be attending Brown University...Matt Golde, Scott Salchunas, Nicholson and Kevin Schofield. Back row...
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THE GUILLOTINE Twentieth-Century Classics That Won't Last No 18: BEN NICHOLSON
Newspaper article from: The Independent - London; 5/9/1999; ; 577 words
; ...world and its phobia of authentic modernity. Ben Nicholson, for example. Nicholson was a fine, subtle artist who could manipulate...red and white? Mir. And so it goes. For all Nicholson's unquestioned talent, for all the grace...
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 "Western Morning News, The Plymouth (UK)")
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Man charged with fraud ; A man has been charged with fraud after the alleged theft of paintings by the English abstract artist Ben Nicholson.
Newspaper article from: Western Morning News, The Plymouth (UK); 1/13/2009; 273 words
; A man has been charged with fraud after the alleged theft of paintings by the English abstract artist Ben Nicholson. Police investigated a reported burglary at an address in St Ives, West Cornwall, last July. They later found the paintings...
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'Telling decoratively': Ben Nicholson's 'white reliefs' and Debates around Abstraction and Modernism in the Home in the Late 1920s and 1930s
Magazine article from: Visual Culture in Britain; 7/1/2008; ; 700+ words
; ...white relief), 1935, Figure 1), Nicholson's abstractions were subsequently praised...supporters of abstraction in general and Nicholson's work in particular. Second, there...belief amongst popular journalists that Nicholson's abstract work was selfconsciously...
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Ben Nicholson
Encyclopedia entry from: Encyclopedia of World Biography
Ben Nicholson Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) was the first English painter to create geometrical abstract paintings and reliefs that directly contributed to the international abstract movement. Ben Nicholson was born near Uxbridge, England, on...
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Nicholson, Ben
Book article from: A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art
Nicholson, Ben (1894–1982). British...Buckinghamshire, son of Sir William Nicholson and Mabel Nicholson, who was the sister...1931 (they divorced in 1938) she and Ben Nicholson took a keen interest in each other...
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Nicholson, Sir William
Book article from: A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art
Nicholson, Sir William (1872–1949). British painter and graphic artist, the father of Ben Nicholson . He was born in Newark-on-Trent and studied at Sir Hubert Herkomer...
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Barbara Hepworth
Encyclopedia entry from: Encyclopedia of World Biography
...married another British artist, Ben Nicholson. Under his influence, her sculpture...and geometrical. Hepworth and Nicholson traveled through France for most...fear for the first time. She and Nicholson had about $100 in the bank at...
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Ede, H. S.
Book article from: A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art
...whom he was friendly included Ben and Winifred Nicholson (whom he met in 1923 and who...from the past. Works of art by Ben Nicholson and Brancusi would sit alongside...represented include David Jones, Ben Nicholson, Alfred Wallis , and Christopher...
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