A new lease of life after death
The words 'neglected artist' appear alongside the name of Prunella Clough with unshakeable regularity. But since the British artist had a number of solo exhibitions during her lifetime, these words don't strictly ring true.
A painter who has always been admired by curators, she failed to gain much public attention until her death - Clough died, aged 80, in 1999, the year she won the Jerwood Painting Prize. Since then, interest in her work has grown.
Tate Britain devotes three rooms to the development of her career, which means visitors also get to see Clough's early figurative paintings from the late 1940s onwards.
This is something of a rarity, since it's usually her later abstracted works on which curators have focused, and it's one of the many delights of this show.
With a soft, earthy palate of browns and russet hues, Clough painted industrial landscapes with delicacy.
These images seem layered, as if with strips of tissue that have adhered to her geometrically delineated surfaces: one series shows fishermen with faces like Cubist masks and fingers like mechanical grabbers.
It's a tension she retains in abstract paintings, such as 1997's Samples. In one of her largest canvases, Stack, 1993, amorphous shapes float by, interrupted only by a central geometric block made up of layers of vibrant colour.
Until Aug 27, Tate Britain, Millbank SW1, daily 10am to 5.50pm, free. Tel: 020 7887 8008. www.tate.org.uk/britain Tube: Pimlico
Prunella Clough: 50 Years Of Making Art
Tate Britain
Millbank, SW1P 4RG
