Ben Nicholson

On numerous occasions throughout his career Nicholson revisited and reworked his paintings and reliefs. This work was started in Brissago, Switzerland, in around 1960 and later finished in Hampstead in 1979. Central to this practice was the notion of palimpsest, in which traces of the earlier work (or ‘idea’) remain, no matter how visible or intact. As he explained to Adrian Stokes, ‘it is very interesting scraping an early [painting] because the thoughts of 20 years ago which one had when making the [painting] come back’. The tonality of this untitled relief suggests that only relatively small changes were made to it at the end of Nicholson’s life, and the work is closely in keeping with his reliefs from 1960. Using a mixture of grey, brown, ice blue and off-black, Nicholson successfully re-invented the genre of carved reliefs that he originated in the 1930s. He returned to relief making in 1960 after moving to Switzerland in 1958, and 1979 (untitled relief) compares closely with contemporaneous works like Feb 1960 (ice-off-blue) (1960, Tate Collection). * 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.