Ben Nicholson

b. 1894, Denham, England

d. 1982, London, England

Ben Nicholson was a British painter and sculptor whose body of work is considered emblematic of British Modernism. Nicholson’s earliest works were inspired by the still lifes by his father, William Nicholson. In the 1920s he would experiment with Post-Impressionist and Cubist techniques, while in the 1930s, he turned much of his attention towards Russian Constructivism. In 1910, Nicholson studied at the Slade School. He then traveled widely between the United States and Europe. Nicholson and his first wife, Winifred Roberts, lived in London and Cumberland, spending winters in Castagnola, Switzerland. His first solo show was at the Adelphi Gallery in 1921. During a visit to Cornwall in 1928 with Christopher Wood, the Nicholsons met the self-taught artist Alfred Wallis, and bought work from him. Nicholson was a member of the Seven and Five Society, and, until he and Paul Nash moved apart, he was active in Unit One.

In 1932 Nicholson visited Paris with Barbara Hepworth (who became his second wife in 1934) and met Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Constantin Brancusi and, Jean Arp. On subsequent visits to Paris in 1933 and 1934 they met Piet Mondrian and László Moholy-Nagy. Jean Hélion encouraged him to join Abstraction-Creation in 1933. Nicholson’s work during this period reflects his contact with Braque and suggests the influence of both Hepworth and Mondrian; he also acknowledged his debt to Juan Miro. In 1937 he, along with Naum Gabo and architect Leslie Martin, edited the monumental book Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, which identified contemporary artists and architects who were experimenting with Constructivist techniques.

With the onset of World War II in 1939, Nicholson and Hepworth left London for St. Ives (where they would both reside until 1958). Here, a collective of British artists including Gabo, Peter Lanyon, Terry Frost, Bryan Wynter, and Patrick Heron, joined them. Both the Cornish landscape and the notable assembly of artists played a significant influence on Nicholson’s work in the 1940s and 1950s.

Nicholson remains one of the most highly accoladed British painters. In 1951 he was commissioned to paint a mural for the Festival of Britain. In 1954 he had a retrospective exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Nicholson’s work received retrospectives at the Tate in 1955 and 1969. In 1956, he received the first ever Guggenheim International Painting Award. The next year, he received the International Prize for Painting at the São Paulo Biennial. In 1968, Queen Elizabeth II gifted him with an Order of Merit, an honor reserved for only twenty-four living citizens of the Commonwealth countries. Today, Nicholson’s work can be found in the Tate Gallery, London; the Tate St. Ives; the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Cleveland Museum of Art, and many more collections around the world.