LONDON.- As the building of Crossrail continues across London,
Bonhams is to hold its Prints Sale on 16 April, which will feature a number of images of London transport from the 1930s. The sale will include celebrated works from the Grosvenor School, such as Cyril Power's ‘The Tube Station’ as well as Cybil Andrews’ ‘Speedway’, both expected to fetch between £50,000 and 70,000.
Power's image of the Tube is an early representation of London transport. His ‘Tube Station’ gives us a taste of the underground’s early days, before it was fully integrated into the network we know today.
The Grosvenor school was a pioneering force in the interwar art world, holding regular exhibitions of their linocuts at the West End’s Redfern Gallery. The school was founded by the printmakers Claude Flight, Cyril-Edward Power and Cybil Andrews in 1925. Artists of the school shared a passion for modern technology with a desire to innovate the art of printmaking through their experimentation with linocuts.
The aim of the school was to portray the “Urban Experience in all its mechanised tumult and electrifying diversity”, which they did through a stylised exaggeration of line and form. The artists commemorated the achievements of the dawn of the Machine Age through print-making, combining art and design to celebrate industry.
Another important lot in this sale will be Christopher Nevinson’s ‘Banking at 4000 Feet’, a lithograph depicting the artist’s experience of flying in an aircraft while observing the ground below, estimated to sell at between £50,000 and £70,000. This work was significant as one of the first to be created whilst airborne, capturing Nevinson’s exhilaration of working in mid-flight. The print-maker is notable for his work as an official war artist while also playing a leading role in the early 20th century Modernist movement. Nevinson was closely associated with Wyndham Lewis and other proponents of Italian Futurism in Britain, sharing a studio with Modgiliani and was believed to have hosted the first cocktail party in Britain.
