Seamen Ashore, Greenock (recto), c.1944; Figures at a Party (verso), c. 1920s
watercolour and pencil
81 x 64.5 cm
signed ‘E.Burra’
Further information »
Seamen Ashore, Greenock (recto), c.1944; Figures at a Party (verso), c. 1920s
Exhibition History:
London, Hamet Gallery, Edward Burra Drawings of the 20s and 30s, October 1971, no. 44;
Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: The Human Face, 22 July – 28 September 2008;
Djanogly Gallery, Edward Burra, 2 March – 27 May 2012; Bristol, Royal West of England Academy, Drawing On, 21 March – 7 June 2015;
Woking, The Lightbox, The Road to Abstraction, 21 May – 24 July 2016;
Hastings, Jerwood Gallery, Century: 100 Modern British Artists, 23 October 2016 – 8 January 2017;
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Land | Sea | Life: A British Art Collection, 20 October 2017 – 17 February 2018
Literature:
Andrew Causey, Edward Burra: Complete Catalogue, Oxford, 1985 (recto illustrated, no. 69)
Burra defies easy categorisation within any of the artistic movements of the twentieth century, his work marking out its own territory somewhere between the abstract and the representational. He was not an abstract artist – his work is often strongly driven by narrative, and his subjects are recognisably themselves – but nor is his work naturalistic. Everything is larger than life, tinged with the grotesque, the surreal and the macabre.
, c.1944; Figures at a Party (verso), c. 1920s)
