Art and Life, 1920-31, Dulwich Picture Gallery - exhibition review
The early work of Ben and Winifred Nicholson reflects the modest response of many Brits to 20th-century European painting's seismic ruptures. This absorbing show, organised by their grandson Jovan, shows them during their 10-year marriage, grappling with continental currents and fusing them with a lyrical English vision, as well as looking at key friendships.
In Twenties paintings made in Lugano and Cornwall and at their Cumberland home, a clear distinction emerges — Ben is all about form, Winifred about colour. Yet both are frustratingly restrained: Winifred’s passion for colour only appears subtly in her polite flower paintings; Ben absorbs modernism’s fractured advances so slowly it’s painful.
It’s left to others to give the show a jolt. Their friend Christopher Wood, troubled and opium-addicted, brings spikiness and darkness, while Alfred Wallis, the Cornish painter they met in St Ives, provides the Nicholsons with directness and vigour.
The show ends in flux: Wood commits suicide in 1930 and the Nicholsons’ marriage falls apart soon after, as Ben meets Barbara Hepworth. Both Nicholsons are making abstracts, yet as they part, their work diverges: Ben forward to reductive abstraction, Winifred back to flowers and landscapes.
Until Sept 21 (020 8299 8732, dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk)
