Interior Study.

BOMBERG, DAVID.

1912

Charcoal and watercolor on paper. Initialed by artist lower right. Framed, labels on reverse.

Born to Polish immigrants, English modernist painter David Bomberg (1890-1957) was one of the most adventurous of an exceptional generation of artists who studied at London’s Slade School of Art. Indeed in 1913 Slade expelled Bomberg due to the audacity of his breach from the conventional artistic approach of the time. A member of the short-lived British Vorticism movement, Bomberg was strongly influenced by both Cubism and Futurism, utilizing angular shapes and bold colors in a grid-like network, as seen in the present example: Cubism’s forms and Futurism’s energy. World War I was to bring a profound change to Bomberg’s outlook. His experience of mechanized slaughter permanently destroyed his faith in the aesthetics of the machine age, instead Bomberg grew to favor portraiture and landscapes, abandoning his earlier avant-garde approach to art.