As Ben Nicholson aged, he developed original technical solutions to the limitations imposed by growing frailty. As he explained in a letter, ‘[I] can no longer have those long sustained spells of cutting & carving reliefs which I relied on for becoming really involved with the work – but new physical problems should produce new solutions’. One such solution in the reliefs of the early 1970s was the introduction of more gestural and loosely applied areas of paint that both frame and overlap with more structural elements of the artwork. 1971 (dolphin) is one of Nicholson’s most successful painterly reliefs, using a strikingly extended upright format and creating a sequence of receding, tapered-edge squares. The work is composed around a single, central area of shallow relief. This underlying structure is developed in areas of monotone black and white paint, loosely brushed washes which allow the tonality of the backboard to penetrate through and register at the surface. The relationship between board and paint has been carefully managed, and the whole work is an expression of Nicholson’s guiding principle of ‘total form’. The unpainted areas of the backboard suggest that, for the artist, this was not merely “background” or “negative space”. Rather, each component of the work, including the frame, played a role in constructing a complete entity with a life of its own. * 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.