Graham Sutherland

Graham Sutherland
1940-1945. Drawings from the town in flames
16th November 2011 – 8th Janaury 2012

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The exhibition Graham Sutherland. Drawings from the town in flames wants to be an invitation to discover a group of works of one of the main English artists of the twentieth century.
At the beginning of the II World War, Graham Sutherland (1903-1980) was appointed war artist by the English government – Kenneth Clark, who was manager of the National Gallery in those year, had the idea of searching for a war artists body as it happened during the first global conflict – so he was sent to London to prove the effects of bombardments. There he was struck by silence – “a strict silence interrupted just every now and then by the faint tinkle of a broken glass” – and by the emptiness developed in wide areas that previously were full of buildings; and , while he wandered with his drawing book in that desolate land, among building and industries debris, destroyed machinery, some fire that still burned, he understood in a dramatic increase how, in front of his eyes, the shapes of the things transformed into others, producing a deep effect on the following works and on his awareness.
In the exhibition there are thirty-eight drawings, realized between 1940 and 1945, a Petite Afrique oil (1953) among the most important of his following production and ten photographs of the age.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue Skira Editore with a wide text of Rachele Ferrario.