Ben Nicholson

In spring 1971, Nicholson left Ticino in Switzerland and moved permanently back to England. He brought with him a number of reliefs, as well as boards that had been pre-cut by his Swiss carpenter following the artist’s templates. In October 1971, an exhibition of thirty-eight of these reliefs opened at Marlborough Fine Art, London, before travelling to Zurich and Rome, of which 1971 (two squares and very green) was one. Writing in the exhibition catalogue, Nicholson’s friend the critic Norbert Lynton summarised the importance of physicality in these works: 'He thrives on the directness of the work, the broad and hairsbreadth decisions that immediately answer back in tangible forms, energies of form responding via material fact to mental energy and muscular work. Nicholson’s line has often been called incisive. Here it is literally incisive, and if we can recognize the intimate rightness for Nicholson of drawing with a knife into the thickness of a board we can also see how much the material action of pencil on paper mattered to him: these are key aspects of the reality he seeks.' After breaking new ground with an initial period of relief making (1934-38), Nicholson had a hiatus, and it was not until 1960 that he once again devoted sustained attention to this method of working. That was two years after he arrived in Switzerland, and his interest in relief making continued seamlessly when he returned to England in 1971. Nicholson’s attitude to colour was underpinned by the need for a pure, resounding visual experience. This could be achieved with both pungent, saturated colours, on one hand, and with the natural colours of stone and wood, on the other. 1971 (two squares and very green) makes this tension in Nicholson’s work clear: the ‘very green’ is so closely related to the natural tint of the wood backboard that they seem to originate from a single idea. Several other works from the 1971 Marlborough exhibition also make titular references to colour, occasionally giving the solo colour a representational connotation, as with 1971 (Carnac with green). Though he was an artist of great seriousness and strong opinions, he also had an impish and occasionally screwball sense of humour, and the broken syntax of the subtitle ‘two squares and very green’ has a low-key jocularity to it. Unlike the clean lines and Euclidean shapes of the earlier reliefs, Lynton noted certain qualities which distinguish Nicholson’s reliefs of the 1960s and ‘70s. ‘His compositions seem to project themselves more boldly from their supports. The planes of which they consist seem looser than before, more active, moving forwards and backwards in relation to one or two accents.’ This is the case with 1971 (two squares and very green) in which the three irregular rectangles on the central panel dance together, their gently tapered outlines flowing in and out of the adjoining planes. The central panel also has a notable projection from the backboard, creating a depth of relief at the edges in contrast to the refined shallowness of recession used to incise the central board. * 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 paint, Nicholson composed a subtly interlocking surface notable for its rich textures. While the reliefs were made 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, astylar 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.