Ben Nicholson: Distant Planes

Ben Nicholson was one of the great British modernists of the twentieth century. This exhibition, curated with Dr Lee Beard, explores Nicholson’s years in Switzerland: a period of creative outpouring which has not received a dedicated display since the show held at Kettle’s Yard in 2003. It presents work made between 1955 and 1979, including several important loans from the British Council, Southampton City Art Gallery and Pallant House Gallery.

In March 1958, Nicholson left his home in St Ives and made for Switzerland. Already regarded as one of Britain’s leading modernists, he settled near Lake Maggiore and quickly established himself as an artist of international acclaim. This exhibition focuses on the carved reliefs and landscape drawings which he made in the second half of his career. Despite their different visual qualities, both grew from Nicholson’s engagement with specific places and landscapes.

[W]ere it possible to 'explain' Ben Nicholson's reliefs there would be little need for the relief's themselves.

David Lewis, 1960s

‘I have favourite places — Mycenae and Pisa, and Siena, for instance — and I feel that in a previous life I must have laid two or three of the stones in Siena Cathedral, or even perhaps one or two of those at Mycenae!’

I should be very sorry indeed if my work contained no element of the romantic, as it would be rather like preventing the moon from getting up behind the mountains.’