David Bomberg, 1890 – 1957

Figure Composition

Oil on panel, 1913

David Bomberg was encouraged to study art by Walter Sickert and attended the Slade with CRW Nevinson and Mark Gertler. The 1910 Manet and the Post-Impressionists exhibition and the work of Paul Cezanne were inspirational to him. His experiments with form led to his expulsion from art school in 1913. Like the Futurists he was spellbound by machinery and conveyed this, as the essence of modernity, in his art. He said "I want to translate the life of a great city, its motion, its machinery, into an art that shall not be photographic, but expressive". Figure Composition depicts humans as angular figures, stripped down to basic forms. Although he was associated with Wyndham Lewis's Vorticists, he was never a part of the group. On leaving the Slade he travelled with Jacob Epstein to Paris, where he met Picasso.

Purchased, 1969