Drawn to Paper: Giacometti to Hockney

Since the Renaissance, blank sheets of paper have been an important creative motor in Western art. They provide a neutral space, ideally suited for both effortless jeux d’esprit and hard-won accumulative mark making. The elementary act of putting pen to paper is one of the few constant factors that connects the activity of artists working over a period stretching back half a millennium. The drawings, works on paper and graphic art in this display showed the many reasons why artists have been drawn to paper.

Encompassing a period from the 1880s to the 1980s, this display brought together exceptional works on paper that map out the shift of influence from Paris to London that occurred in the mid-twentieth century. Drawings by Paul Gauguin and Pierre Bonnard use pencil and chalk in a painterly, post-impressionist mode. Shimmering watercolour by Paul Nash and wax crayon by Henry Moore show a modernist sensibility, reconciling pictorial media with visionary non-naturalistic imagery. Alberto Giacometti’s crystalline graphite drawing and Frank Auerbach’s heavily worked charcoals reflect a common attentiveness to subject. David Hockney’s inventive draughtsmanship marks a po-mo conclusion to a century of modernism. The display also included works by Walter Sickert, John Nash, Leon Kossoff, Michael Andrews and Lucian Freud.