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Dimensions: measurements 20 by 32 1/8 in. alternate measurements 50.8 by 81.6 cm
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Provenance: Gimpel Fils Gallery, London (acquired by 1954)
Galleria Blu, Milan
Crane Kalman Gallery, London
John Moores, England (acquired from the above in 1968)
Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Private Collection, acquired from the above in 1970
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Exhibited:
London, Lefevre Gallery, Ben Nicholson , 1952, no. 25
Japan, The British Council, Fine Arts Department, Second International Art Exhibition, 1953, no. 22
Edinburgh, Society of Scottish Artists, 1954, no. 5
Rome, Galleria La Medusa, Studio d'Arte Contemporanea, n.d., no. 636
London, Crane Kalman Gallery, Modern British Paintings , 1970-71, no. 6
Atlanta, High Museum of Art, on extended loan from 1987
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Notes: PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION
This work is incribed on the reverse: This painting was based on the six holes bored in this piece of wood - without these holes, obviously the painting would not have been made BN
Having moved down to St. Ives in 1939 after the outbreak of war, living conditions for Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and their triplets were often cramped, artistÂ?s materials were in severe shortage and their connections with the international art world were limited. In the 1930s Nicholson had built up an important network of connections within the European avant-garde, particularly in Paris, and the isolation of the war years saw a move in his work away from the pure abstraction he had been pursuing towards a more landscape-influenced style. However, after the end of the war, he began to become increasingly abstract once more, this time working within an abstracted still-life idiom. Still-Life (6 Eyes) dates from this prolific and astoundingly modern period in the artist's oeuvre.
Norbert Lynton writes of these still-lifes and their relation to the works that had come before, "It is striking that in many of the major paintings of the early to mid-1950s, BN's still life has to exist without the partnering landscape he had accustomed us to. The near/far duality is not, as in 1950, April (Abélard and Héloïse) [Fig. 1], replaced by an unambiguous interior setting, concentrating all spatial action on what is on the table and its relation to the unified background, but usually by something much less specific. Our attention is sought first by the play of lines that represent the still life, secondly by the supporting planes that were the table, and only thirdly by the wider setting and and its implications of space and location. Each element has surrendered the major part of what made it recognizable, and thus these still-life compositions strike one as abstract, through their mode of abstraction is utterly different from that of the white reliefs" (Norbert Lynton, op. cit., p. 252).
By the 1950s, Nicholson's reputation as an artist was well secured. Between 1946 and 1960, he was exhibited in forty British Council exhibitions around the world, and by 1956 his works had been acquired by twenty museum collections abroad, ten of which were in the crucial American market. Only Henry Moore could rival the profile that Nicholson built during the 1950s. Despite this critical success, Nicholson resisted complacency and, as the present work indicates, effectively sought artistic innovation with a modern sensibility.
Figure 1 Ben Nicholson, 1950, April (still life -- Abélard and Héloïse),1950, oil and pencil on canvas, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
