LONDON.- Piano Nobile is presenting an exhibition of works by Cyril Mann dating from 1951 to 1957.
In the early fifties, the painter Cyril Mann developed a visual style defined by its hard-edged and stylised shadows. Where previously he had explored the effects of natural light, between 1951 and 1957, he briefly experimented with the effects of shadow. In the areas of his pictures where light doesn’t fall, he created boldly outlined, densely painted surfaces. As such, these works in the exhibition came to be known as the solid shadow paintings.
After Mann was rehoused to an apartment above a gold bullion dealer in Old Street, Shoreditch his style rapidly changed. The bars on the windows to his room restricted natural light, forcing the artist to work under the artificial glow of the lightbulb. With these changed conditions, he observed something he had previously ignored – the line, usually invisible, which joins an object to the shadow it casts. Although one usually thinks of shadow as a flat dark silhouette, Mann’s solid shadow work shows that shadow extends in space, filling the area between an object and the darkened surface behind it.
Mann’s solid shadow paintings foreshadow a pictorial creativity not given full expression until the ascendancy of Pop Art. His representation of light under lightbulbs led Mann to innovate with stronger, often non-naturalistic colour. In Dahlias in Blue Vase (c. 1953) Mann simplified and strengthened the colour values, with dazzling monochrome yellow flowers complementing the blue interior. By using thick black outlines, he was able to isolate and highlight specific details in his pictures. Much like a jigsaw puzzle, these pictures come together as the sum of a complex, overarching programme.
Mann also experimented with non-naturalistic colour effects in his depiction of shadows. Sometimes falling like camouflage, manifesting themselves is a carefully planned pattern of interlocking colour panels. In Mackerel (c. 1955) the blade of the knife has been pieced together from brown, grey, blue and yellow patches. Many of his subjects, fruits or vessels he had to hand, were often isolated on a vivid yellow background without the spatial reference of a table edge; lending his work startling immediacy. In Still Life with Pomegranate (c. 1955) opened and unopened pomegranates alongside two pieces of peel appear to float over the yellow surface, surrounded by pools of brilliant blue and green shadows.
Mann’s preparatory drawings from this period show how his still-life subjects were meticulously composed. Mann often addressed the same subject using a mixture of different modelling techniques. In each drawing a different graphics have been used to represent varying gradations of shadow. In one drawing, Mann has used coarse hatching with a thick pencil, while in another, he has used watercolour to block out segments in subtly varying hues. These preparatory works suggest considerable dexterity of draughtsmanship. The contours of Mann’s preparatory drawings were not just compositionally significant. They also served as an apparatus by which to represent light.
The solid shadow paintings have a significant place in the trajectory of post war British painting. Uncompromising in his bright and carefully delineated stylisations, the paintings herald the rich stream of transatlantic artistic activity that would follow in the nineteen sixties, including the work of Patrick Caulfield, Michael Craig Martin, Julian Opie and John Wesley. Indeed, Craig-Martin’s much later cycle of lightbulb works, created in 2015 in collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries, might be regarded as a belated corollary to Mann’s lightbulb-lit still lifes.
Mann’s solid shadow paintings were discovered by Erica Brausen, the proprietor of the Hanover Gallery.
