Page 53 - Studio International - September 1974

of the establishment with the Black ships and marine life. Shells, paintings, drawings and sculpture of or propagandist paintings. In the
Country drawings which were compasses, binoculars, seaweed, Merlyn Evans had been broadly thirties and after Evans saw no reason
exhibited early in 1920. These are the sextants, charts and fishing equipment planned by him as a retrospective to keep unemployment, fascism, and
most flabby works in Colnaghi's are carefully arranged against a show before his death. It is an the war he knew, out of his work. So
exhibition, but it was with them that backcloth of calm sea and blue sky. impressive and warming there are confronted heroic, armoured
contemporary critics felt his 'mature From these still-lives it was only a demonstration of independent figures duelling and being destroyed
achievement' began. Even after the small step to dispense with creative achievement. The force and and it may be possible to relate them
artist's death, a review of the recognizable forms altogether and at strictness of those shapes to which to Masaryk, Stalin, Mussolini and
memorial exhibition held at the Tate in the beginning of the thirties he sought to give 'an independent even John Kennedy.
1951 insinuated that this series was Wadsworth was again amongst the immediacy where the forms lead a Yet he was primarily concerned with
his most vital contribution because British avant garde as an artist life of their own' has been recognised, abstract form, absolute colour and the
'with them he may have exorcized the composing with flat abstract shapes. particularly in his prints. The show, infinite interrelations of the two. He
nightmare of the slagheaps, furnaces, Along with Nicholson, Hepworth, which excludes prints, forces went in search of Mondrian,
and quarries, sidings and factory Moore, Nash, Armstrong and others attention to an orchestration of colour Kandinsky, Giacometti and di Chirico
stacks'. Perhaps it is because this he contributed his statement, in form more subtler and fiercer than I when they were regarded as
mediocre and typically British period answering Herbert Read's had remembered. continental eccentrics, but refrained
of Wadsworth's career has been given questionnaire, to Unit One, before Merlyn Evans matured early : 'By from becoming a classifiable convert
so much attention that he has been abruptly returning to figurative temperament and preference, I have to Constructivism or to Surrealism. He
relatively neglected since the Tate painting in 1934. The still-lives of the been, from the age of seventeen, an was a serious student of philosophy
exhibition. following five years are more eerie and abstract painter.' His 'realistic' student and exceptionally well-informed
Colnaghi's exhibition, with more menacing than the earlier group, with work, often in tempera on panel, still about the psychology of perception.
works on loan than for sale, shows nostalgic titles, such as World of stands up. His occasional portrait He wrote his own poems and was a
how much more Wadsworth achieved Happy Days, heightening their drawings and studies of the nude masterly craftsman in cabinet-making,
not only as a vorticist, but later when disturbing impact. The same range of command more than academic printing technique and other skills.
he was working without that boost to objects, often enlarged above their respect. His approach to landscape as The exhibition of paintings will be
creativity that being one of a group natural size, begin to move around in a theme includes the lyrical shown in London after its time in
can provide. Equal emphasis is given space; gigantic shells or propellers Beech wood By Moonlight of Cardiff and Glasgow. A show of prints
to every aspect of his work and pirouette on the quay. At the end of 1931-33, the occasional tormented called 'Tribute To Merlyn Evans' runs
photographs are used where the the thirties he experimented with tree trunk, many abstracted forms of at the Cartwright Hall, Bradford City
original paintings have been lost. pointillism at the same time as bird, beast, crustacean and the Art Gallery, until 29 September, in
increasing the scope of his vision once conjunction with the 1974 Print
more to include whole ships in dock. Biennial.
One pointillist quay scene was Frederick Laws
painted in Seurat's Honfleur. In the
last decade of his life he reverted
again to abstract pictures, this time Paul Nash paintings and
composing directly from the forms in illustrations at the Scottish
his still-lives. National Gallery of Modern Art,
Wadsworth's work shows the July, August
influence of many of his The Paul Nash exhibition arranged by
contemporaries. But his own ways of David Brown at the Scottish National
seeing, selecting and painting were Gallery of Modern Art is small, only
too personal and powerful to allow 23 oils and watercolours together with
his paintings to become reflections of some of the artist's illustrated books
others. Painted in tempera, a and photographs. Despite its modest
technique that requires rigid control size the exhibition looks substantial.
and allows no second thoughts, The reason is that it has a strong core
they have an unusual clarity of important oils of the years after
and precision. His evolution, with 1928. Many of these (particularly
three switches from figurative to those of 1928-36) are resilient,
abstract modes of expression, was uningratiating pictures, opaquely
disjointed but the same desire for painted with a lot of white mixed into
Edward Wadsworth Punch Bats 1942
Tempera on panel. 35 x 25 in. structure and solidarity is visible the colours. Unlike the soft, luminous
throughout. He seldom wrote about watercolours, they are not
his work except when his name was immediately likeable, but their
There is only one small linked with those more prone to carefully structured precision makes
disappointment: his brief period at theorizing, but the analysis of his them very close to Nash himself, and
Fry's Omega workshops is alluded to approach given at such a time in 'The Merlyn Evans Composition No. 3 1962 they represent his best achievement.
only by five monochrome designs Abstract Painter's Own Explanation' The exhibition confirms the
rather than by one of the colourful (The Studio, November 1933) generally recognized fact that Nash is
rugs for which he was responsible. applies equally to his paintings at all monstrous cranes and powered most approachable as a
The well-produced catalogue to the periods, figurative or non-figurative. spaces of the dockyard. watercolourist. The two early pen and
exhibition, decorated with the Wadsworth, who was first trained as But his landscape and street-scape wash drawings which open the
alphabet Wadsworth designed, is the an engineer, believed that everyone, also includes, encloses, and threatens exhibition chronologically, The
best source of information on the whether he was an engineer, a people. It echoes the prisons of Pyramids in the Sea (1912) and The
artist available at present. gardener or an artist, was motivated Piranesi, offers a stage for Cliff to the North (1912-3) are not
After producing his vorticist by a similar desire to combat the demonstration and trouble by the city only nervously intense, but their
designs, culminating in the 'capriciousness' of nature and to crowd. It is not cosily rustic, a expression is uninhibited compared
magnificent tight paintings and impose some sort of control on his romantic womb of woodland, a with some of the following
wood-cuts inspired by his work on environment. All his paintings aim at simple private pattern. Many of watercolours. Indeed it is not until
dazzle ships at the end of the war, creating with their repetition of Evans' works deserve his bold title for Nash's last works, like the 1945
Wadsworth collapsed first into the certain forms, lines and colours a kind one of them Paesaggio Tragico. Eclipse of the Sunflower, with its
Black Country drawings and then into of harmonious order. Evans was unable to detach flamboyant richness of colouring, that
a series of views of ports on to which Susan Lambert himself from the world he lived in and he seems to speak so forthrightly
he tried to impose, not too was concerned with themes that can again in watercolour. Compared with
successfully, a cube-like structure. be called political. There is his the luxurious painterliness of Eclipse
Realizing the shortcomings of these Merlyn Evans at the National Distressed Area of 1938, Victims of of the Sunflower, the successors of
panoramas he destroyed many of Museum of Wales, Cardiff, 29 June- Demolition (about Finland in 1939) those early pen drawings seem frail
them himself and began, in the mid- 11 August, Glasgow Museum and Art and the Chess Players of 1940 (about and remote : in the 1913 Wittenham
twenties, to restrict his subject matter Gallery, 23 August-22 September the Soviet-German pact). But none of Clumps thin colours are added almost
to moveable objects associated with The current memorial exhibition of the these are anecdotal, simply symbolic with apology to the drawing, and