MASTERPIECES FROM THE BEN URI COLLECTION
DAVID BOMBERG (1890-1957)
Signed and dated (lower left): Bomberg 1920
GHETTO THEATRE
1920 Oil on canvas
DAVID BOMBERG
David Bomberg’s Ghetto Theatre (1920) stands as a defining postwar masterpiece and a pivotal work within the artist’s oeuvre, marking his transition from the hard-edged abstraction of his Vorticist phase to a more expressive and socially conscious mode of figuration This monumental composition captures the interior of a
Yiddish theatre in London’s East End evoking both the cultural vitality and existential fragility of Jewish immigrant life in the aftermath of the First World War The painting’s spatial dynamics are dominated by a sweeping diagonal balustrade, which bisects the composition and separates two groups of figures Above, rows of theatrical spectators clad in vibrant red are arranged in a rhythmic pattern of angular forms and bowed heads, their anonymity suggesting a collective experience of absorption or sorrow. Below, a more sombre assembly dressed in muted browns and blacks echoes this meditative mood. Bomberg’s use of flattened planes and angular geometry, rooted in his earlier modernist training, intensifies the dramatic structure of the composition Painted in the year of his election to the London Group and purchase by the Ben Uri Collection, Ghetto Theatre is widely regarded as a poignant expression of postwar trauma and cultural identity It bridges private suffering and public performance, and affirms Bomberg’s role as a major voice in British Modernism
David Bomberg was born to Polish-Jewish parents in Birmingham, England on 12 May 1890 The family moved to Whitechapel in 1895, where he later became prominent among the ‘Whitechapel Boys’ - the term applied to a loose, informal group of young, Jewish, mainly immigrant artists who were either born, raised or worked in the
East End in the first two decades of the 20th century, and who, both collectively, and individually, made an important contribution to British Modernism. Initially apprenticed as a chromolithographer, he attended night classes under Walter Sickert and also worked as an artist’s model before studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he was seen as a ‘disturbing influence’ In 1913 Bomberg visited Paris with Jacob Epstein, making contact with artists including Modigliani and Picasso Bomberg’s harrowing service in the trenches during the First World War was compounded by a disastrous experience as a commissioned war artist, explored in a series of related drawings His postwar disillusionment is most powerfully expressed in the masterly Ghetto Theatre (1920), purchased the same year for the Ben Uri Collection, initiating a lifelong relationship
Afterwards, Bomberg made a series of peopled landscapes before travelling in 1923 to Jerusalem, where he began to work en plein air for the first time. Following expeditions to Jericho, Petra and Wadi Kelt, he produced a series of detailed, realistic landscapes, which evolved from tightly topographical treatments into a looser, characteristically expressionistic style, heralding the painterly achievements of his final years After a series of disappointments in the 1930s and 1940s Bomberg concentrated on portraits of friends and family, as well as a series of searching self-portraits Although only reluctantly granted a Second World War commission to paint a bomb store in 1942, Bomberg produced many drawings and paintings on the subject, among them an impressive, large-scale study for a projected (but unrealised) mural Following his visit to Spain in 1929, a renewed vigour resulted in a series of works based on the cathedral at Toledo, flowering on his second visit in 1934–35, into dramatic landscapes of the gorge at Ronda and flickering night-time processions during Holy Week
These experiments were curtailed by the onset of the Spanish Civil War, but over a decade later picked up and progressed in the west country, where his loosened handling verged on the abstract, and in Cyprus in 1948 His final works culminated in the fulfillment of his early promise after his return to Ronda, where he spent his last years After becoming seriously ill, Bomberg traveled back to England, but died in London shortly after his return, on 19 August 1957. His work is represented in the UK in a number of important public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the British Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the Tate, and the V&A A posthumous touring exhibition (Pallant House, Chichester; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle; Ben Uri Gallery, London), accompanied by a monograph, was organised by Ben Uri in 2017-18 His final works culminated in the fulfillment of his early promise after his return to Ronda, where he spent his last years After becoming seriously ill, Bomberg travelled back to England, but died in London shortly after his return, on 19 August 1957 His work is represented in the UK in a number of important public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the British Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the Tate, and the V&A. A posthumous touring exhibition (Pallant House, Chichester; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle; Ben Uri Gallery, London), accompanied by a monograph, was organised by Ben Uri in 2017-18.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: COLLECTION: https://benuri.org/collections/
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