Piano Nobile
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • Viewing Room
  • News
  • InSight
  • Publications
  • About
  • Contact
Cart
0 items £
Checkout

Item added to cart

View cart & checkout
Continue shopping
Menu

Ben Nicholson

  • Works
  • Publications
  • Exhibitions
  • Video
  • News
  • Biography
  • Previous artist Browse artists Next artist
Ben Nicholson, November 1960 (Anne), 1960

Ben Nicholson

November 1960 (Anne), 1960
Oil on carved board
87.6 x 50.8 cm
34 1/2 x 20 in
 
Enquire About Similar Works
%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22artist%22%3EBen%20Nicholson%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22title_and_year%22%3E%3Cspan%20class%3D%22title_and_year_title%22%3ENovember%201960%20%28Anne%29%3C/span%3E%2C%20%3Cspan%20class%3D%22title_and_year_year%22%3E1960%3C/span%3E%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22medium%22%3EOil%20on%20carved%20board%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22dimensions%22%3E87.6%20x%2050.8%20cm%3Cbr/%3E%0A34%201/2%20x%2020%20in%3C/div%3E
View on a wall
In November 1960, Nicholson was looking forward to moving into the new house and studio that he and his wife Felicitas Vogler were having built in Gadero, in the municipality of Brissago, Switzerland. With the promise of compelling views across Lake Maggiore being constantly present, Nicholson jokily enthused to his ex-wife Winifred that they had even got some of ‘the mountains in the right place without going to the expense of moving them’. November 1960 (Anne) was larger than the small-scale reliefs which Nicholson had been making for the previous five years, in Cornwall and then in his first two years in Switzerland. This change was partly in response to the scale of the landscape in which he found himself. The work has a rectilinear quality, and the carved relief at its centre is composed from quadrilaterals. Rather than execute these shapes with sharp-edged right-angles, Nicholson shaped each carved area with tapered outlines: each shape is subtly irregular, presenting a frontal appearance of a foreshortened square, as if the surface were tilting. As well as registering the scale of the landscape in which it was made, November 1960 (Anne) also uses unresolved applications of paint on the backboard around the central relief; these areas of freely brushed lines introduce a suggestion of atmosphere, in contrast to the defined edges and uniform surfaces of the carved relief. The title of the work is an anomaly. Nicholson scholars have so far been unable to identify the eponymous ‘Anne’. The artist once referred to his bracketed subtitles as ‘luggage tags’, never intending them to refer to any representational content in a work. Nicholson had a lifelong love of animals, especially cats, which he shared with his third wife, Vogler, and it is plausible that the title was taken from a pet. * In March 1958, Ben Nicholson left his home and studio in St Ives for Switzerland. He settled near Lake Maggiore and began a period marked by its fluency and self-confidence. In Switzerland, he produced reliefs, landscapes and still lifes, further establishing his reputation not only as one of Britain’s leading modernists but also as an artist of international acclaim. Following a decade of awards and critical celebration, including the ‘Ulissi’ Prize at the 1954 Venice Biennale and the First International Prize for Painting at São Paulo in 1957, Nicholson was buoyed with enthusiasm and creative zeal. His move to mainland Europe marked the start of a remarkable and prolific period in his exceptional oeuvre. Nicholson’s work of the 1960s was shaped by an intense engagement with his surroundings: the striking landscapes and historical sites which he encountered in the Canton of Ticino, as well as those he discovered on travels to Italy, Greece, Portugal and France. Pencil drawing and carved painted relief were parallel mediums in Nicholson’s practice at the time, and he used both as vehicles of expression to capture the ‘idea’ of these newly discovered European environments. Though his work was not always representational, it was systematically related to the places he experienced. Working as a kind of equivalent, his abstract reliefs of this period suggest the weathered patina of ancient buildings. Nicholson used a direct and physical process, scratching the hard board and scraping away layers of applied paint. By roughening and incising the support and revealing underlayers of wood and colour, Nicholson composed a subtly interlocking surface notable for its rich textures. While the reliefs were composed in Nicholson’s studio, the drawings flowed directly from his encounters with life outside and were often spurred by an interest in architecture – the tympanum over a doorway, an idiosyncratic capital or the characterful silhouettes of a townscape. Much like the reliefs, the drawings developed from a pure interest in shape and line. Though the drawings are artistic achievements in their own right, they helped Nicholson to distil his idea of a place and communicate it in the abstract, poetic qualities of his carved reliefs.
Read more
 
Close full details

Provenance

With André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Helena W. and Robert M. Benjamin, New York, 1962
Private Collection, London

Exhibitions

1961, New York, André Emmerich Gallery, Ben Nicholson, 11 April - 6 May 1961, cat. no. 7
1962, Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery
1967, New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, The Helen W. & Robert M. Benjamin Collection, 4 May - 18 June 1967, cat. no. 131
2001, London, Helly Nahmad Gallery, Ben Nicholson, 21 Sept. - 30 Nov. 2001, cat. no. 31 (col. illus.)
2012, London, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, Ben Nicholson: Paintings, Reliefs and Drawings, 4 April - 16 June 2012, unnumbered
2020, London, Piano Nobile, Ben Nicholson: Distant Planes, 15 Oct. 2020 - 16 April 2021, cat. no. 6

Literature

Sophie Bowness, Ben Nicholson, exh. cat., Helly Nahmad Gallery, 2001, pp. 74-75, cat. no. 31 (col. illus.)
Christopher Neve, Ben Nicholson, exh. cat., Bernard Jacobson Gallery, 2012, p. 41 (illus.)
Lee Beard, Peter Khoroche and Chris Stephens, Ben Nicholson: Distant Planes, exh. cat., Piano Nobile, 2020, cat. no. 6, pp. 38-39, 75 (col. illus.)
Share
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Email
Previous
|
Next
7 
of  8

Subscribe to our mailing list

Subscribe

We will process the personal data you have supplied to communicate with you in accordance with our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails.

PIANO NOBILE

96 / 129 Portland Road | London | W11 4LW

+44 (0)20 7229 1099

info@piano-nobile.com 

Monday - Friday 10am - 6pm | Saturday 11am - 4pm

Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Join the mailing list
View on Google Maps
Privacy Policy
Manage cookies
Terms & Conditions
Copyright © 2022 Piano Nobile
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences