Chichesater, UK.- The Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, West Sussex, is delighted to present the first major show for over 25 years of the work of Edward Burra (1905 – 1976), one of the most individual and celebrated British artists of the twentieth century. Featuring some of his best known images of cafés, bars and nightclubs, as well as examples of other aspects of the artist’s oeuvre such as his fascination with the macabre and dark sides of humanity, his role as a talented designer for the stage and sensitive depictions of the British landscape, this new exhibition provides a unique opportunity to reassess Burra’s extraordinary creativity and impressive legacy. “Edward Burra” will be on view from October 22nd Through February 19th 2012.
Despite suffering from acute arthritis, Edward Burra created a large body of memorable images during his lifetime, featuring monumental scale and unusually powerful handling of the watercolour medium. Defiantly anti-intellectual, he was nevertheless widely read and drew on an extraordinary range of influences from Old Master paintings by artists such as Bosch, Brueghel, El Greco, Hogarth and Goya, to his own contemporaries such as William Roberts, Fernand Léger and the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) artists Otto Dix and George Grosz, as well as Hollywood cinema, ballet, and jazz music. Yet despite these many influences Burra remained distinct from most mainstream art movements though he was a member of the British art group Unit One and the English Surrealist Group in the 1930s and a close friend of the artist Paul Nash.
Burra painted for himself, describing it as ‘a sort of drug’ and each of his paintings is unmistakably his own. The exhibition opens on the 35th anniversary of Burra’s death on 22 October 1976, and is the largest single-artist exhibition held at the Gallery. Many of these works have been drawn from private collections, and have not been shown in public for many years, as well as national collection such as Tate, National Portrait Gallery, Imperial War Museum, and the Victoria Albert Museum.
Edward Burra (29 March 1905 – 22 October 1976) was an English painter, draughtsman and printmaker, best known for his depictions of the urban underworld, black culture and the Harlem scene of the 1930s. Burra was born in South Kensington, London, and attended preparatory school but later had to be withdrawn due to anaemia and rheumatic fever. Burra studied at Chelsea School of Art from 1921-3, and the Royal College of Art from 1923-4. He had his first solo show at the Leicester Galleries in 1929. He was a member of Unit One in 1933 and showed with the English Surrealists later in the 1930s. Burra travelled widely, and many influences are at play in his works, which were usually watercolour on a large scale in strong colours. During World War Two, when it became impossible to travel, he also became involved in designing scenery and costumes for ballet (including Miracle in the Gorbals) and became very successful in that field. He declined membership of the Royal Academy in 1963 after being elected but was created CBE in 1971. The Tate Gallery held a retrospective of his work in 1973. After breaking his hip in 1974 his health declined sharply and he died in Hastings, England in 1976. Archive material of Edward Burra’s is held at the Tate Gallery Archive.
Walter Hussey, the Dean of Chichester Cathedral, left his personal collection to the city in 1977 with the condition that the collection be shown in Pallant House, a Grade 1 listed Queen Anne town house dating from 1712. Since 1919, the house had been used as Council offices and from 1979 a restoration programme began and preparations were made for it to open in 1982 as a unique combination of historic house and modern art gallery. In 1985 an independent trust, consisting of the Friends and representatives of the Council, was formed to manage the Gallery. Since then the collections and the Gallery’s activities have expanded to the extent that it was decided a new building was needed in order for it to survive. The Gallery reopened Summer 2006 with a new wing and vastly improved facilities. Pallant House Gallery boasts one of the best collections of Modern British art in the UK. donated over the past thirty years, the collections tell the story of a number of individuals, all passionate collectors of art who generously donated their lifetimes’ labours to the Gallery for the benefit of the public. Since Dean Walter Hussey’s gift of works by Henry Moore, John Piper, Ceri Richards, Graham Sutherland and others that led to its inception in 1982, the Gallery has attracted the interest of other benefactors, most notably Charles Kearley and now Sir Colin St John Wilson. The core of this ‘collection of collections’ is Modern British art butother artworks figure such at the Bow Porcelain of the Geoffrey Freeman Collection. Each group of works has been formed by different impulses and lends its own character to the collection, making the experience of Pallant House Gallery engaging, insightful and unique. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.pallant.org.uk