Ben Nicholson was born on April 10, 1894, in Denham, Buckinghamshire. He attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1910-11 and then between 1911 and 1914 he travelled in France, Italy, and Spain. He lived briefly in Pasadena, California in 1917-18. His first solo show was held at the Adelphi Gallery in London in 1922. Shortly after he began abstract paintings influenced by Synthetic Cubism. By 1927 he had initiated a primitive style inspired by Henri Rousseau and early English folk art.  From 1931 he lived in London and his association with Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore dates from this period. In 1932 he and Hepworth visited Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque, and Pablo Picasso in France. Jean Hélion and Auguste Herbin encouraged them to join Abstaction-Creation in 1933. Nicholson made his first wood relief in 1933; the following year he met Piet Mondrian and married Hepworth. In 1937 Nicholson edited Circle: International Survey of Constructivist Art, which he had conceived in 1935.  After moving to Cornwall in 1939 he resumed painting landscapes and added colour to his abstract reliefs. In 1945-46 he turned from reliefs to linear, abstract paintings and began to explore print-making. Nicholson was commissioned to paint a mural for the Time-Life Building in London in 1952. He was given retrospectives at the Venice Biennale in 1954, and at the Tate Gallery, London, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 1955. Nicholson moved to Switzerland in 1958 and began to concentrate once more on painted reliefs. This is the period of his collaboration with the master printer Lafanca, in whose studio he made his most important etchings in a bust of creativity. In 1964 he made a concerted wall relief for the Documentar III exhibition in Kassel, Germany, and in 1968 was awarded the Oder of Merit by Queen Elizabeth. The Albright-Knox Art Galley, Buffalo, organized a retrospective of his work in 1978. Ben Nicholson died on February 6, 1982, in London.

Turkish Form
Etching
1967
24.5 x 12.5
edition of 50
printed on wove paper
£2,700 SOLD