Bomberg / Marr: Spirits In The Mass

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Piano Nobile is pleased to announce an exhibition celebrating the work of David Bomberg and Leslie Marr. Concentrating on the years after the Second World War when Bomberg became an influential teacher at the Borough Polytechnic, Bomberg / Marr: Spirits in the Mass will be the first examination of the personal and creative bonds uniting these two pioneers of modern British painting.

Both artists endeavoured to strip the external world to its bare essentials. Often using powerful organic tonalities, Bomberg and Marr worked toward a vigorous expression their subjects through an architectural and analytic, yet fraught and unstable formal construction. Alongside other much-admired students at the Borough Polytechnic such as Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff, Marr sought out what Bomberg described as ‘the spirit in the mass’: a sense of immanence, of intangible significance held in the painter’s communion with the shifting solidity of the physical world. Marr strove to develop a subjective interpretation of Bomberg’s instruction. As an essentially individualistic and lyric project, he extricated himself from his tutor’s mastery of expressive landscape to develop a personal style exceptional within the wider London School.

Presenting a discerning selection of major works, Bomberg / Marr: Spirits in the Mass will place Marr, for the first time, in his rightful place as not just a pupil of Bomberg’s but a peer. Through these rarely exhibited landscapes, self-portraits, and still lifes from private collections and Marr’s personal collection, the exhibition aims to achieve a fuller appreciation of both artists.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with an essay by Richard Cork. A Gallery talk will be held toward the end of the exhibition, please contact Piano Nobile for more information.