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Ben Nicholson

Art genre: Abstract art.
Art media: Painting, textile design, carving.

Life: Ben Nicholson and his siblings Nacy and Kit were the children of artists William Nicholson and Mabel Pryde. Born in Buckinghamshire 1894, he studied for a year at the Slade School of Art, then spent most of the period 1912-18 abroad because of his health. He married the artist Winifred Dacre in 1920 and had three children. In 1931, he met the sculptor Barbara Hepworth whom he married three years later and with whom he had three more children. They moved to Cornwall in 1939 and he remained there until he moved to Switzerland in 1957 with his third wife, Felicitas Vogler. He was made a Member of the Order of Merit in 1968 and returned to England in 1972. He died in 1982, aged eighty-seven.

Work: In the early 1930s Nicholson lived in Hampstead and was part of a leading group of abstract artists. As well as painting he began to design textiles. Artists such as Picasso and Mondrian influenced his early work. With Hepworth, he was one of the artists of the St Ives movement. He believed that art should be accessible to everyone and that barriers between art and design should be broken down. He designed fabrics that were woven and printed by the Edinburgh Weavers, an innovative company devoted to involving artists in textile design. In 1954 a retrospective exhibition at the Venice Bienniale recognised Nicholson's success as an artist.

Find out more:
www.britainunlimited.com/Biogs/Nicholson.htm
www.en.wikipedia.org

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