Ben Nicholson - why does he simplify still life forms and negative space and superimpose them on the Cornish landscape?
It seems that Ben Nicholson was heavily influenced by cubism, which he understood, and practiced his own original version during the 1920’s. He produced a series of still life paintings in which he scraped the canvas down, setting the objects in a sculptural space reminiscent of landscape (as in Still Life – Greek Landscape 1931-36) when he spent some time traveling. He also began his white carved reliefs around this time.
It was much later on (around 1940) when his art took on a new direction, following this, and after moving to St. Ives. The area around St Ives is well known for the brightness and clarity of light and this most likely influenced his method of using light almost transparent colour, giving an illusion of landscape and filtering the still life objects, retaining their geometric shapes he still recalled from the 1920’s cubism. This gives an impression of space all around the objects, including behind and in front of them, helping to accentuate the negative space.
Mousehole is to me an ideal example of his work, encapsulating very well many subjects, styles and methods he preferred to use into one painting. These include still life, white reliefs, landscape, cubism, with rich textural and transparent effects, at the same time as both mixing and superimposing still life with landscape.
Ben Nicholson - Mousehole british council
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