David Bomberg

About

This superb group of paintings and drawings originate from the Artist’s estate in the late 1950s. “The collection highlights some of the complexities of Bomberg’s creative and intellectual life, the tenacious deepening of ideas over his lifetime and, above all, his remarkably prescient responses to the major events and movements of his age.”[2]

Born in Birmingham in 1890 to Polish-Jewish parents, Bomberg was largely undervalued in his lifetime. Today, however, his series of colourful, complex geometric compositions which combine the influences of cubism and futurism are renowned and Bomberg stands as one of the masters of British painting.

Three facts that you may not know about David Bomberg:

The late, musical legend, David Bowie was one of Bomberg’s greatest collectors. He confessed to being a big “fan” of his work. Many of Bomberg’s paintings and drawings were sold in the Bowie/Collector Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Auction at Sotheby’s.

DavidBombergwasawardedagrantbytheJEAS(JewishEducationArtSociety)tostudyat Slade School of Art, where he was later expelled for his challenging approach to conformism and the traditional teaching methods. In an excerpt taken from his Report Card, his three professors suggested that once Bomberg had “...learnt a little more modesty and humility and ceased to theorise and analyse quite so much, he may well become a noteworthy artist...”

In the late 1940s, Bomberg taught at the Borough Polytechnic (now London South Bank University), where Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossof were amongst his pupils. Auerbach once described his former tutor as “probably the most original stubborn, radical intelligence that was to be found in art schools.”

The exhibition boasts around thirty different works by Bomberg and encompasses different subjects throughout his life including his influence on modern art, his Jewish origins and family, the profound effect of both World Wars and his time spent in Jerusalem and Spain.