Bomberg David
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David Garshen Bomberg (5 December 1890 – 19 August
1957) was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.
Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional
generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under
Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer,
C.R.W. Nevinson and Dora Carrington. Bomberg painted a series of
complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism
and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I;
typically using a limited number of striking colours, turning humans
into simple, angular shapes, and sometimes overlaying the whole
painting a strong grid-work colouring scheme. He was expelled from
the Slade School of Art in 1913, with agreement between the senior
teachers Tonks, Frederick Brown and Philip Wilson Steer, because of
the audacity of his breach from the conventional approach of that
time.
Whether because his faith in the machine age had been shattered
by his experiences as a private soldier in the trenches or because
of the pervasive retrogressive attitude towards modernism in Britain
Bomberg moved to a more figurative style in the 1920s and his work
became increasingly dominated by portraits and landscapes drawn from
nature. Gradually developing a more expressionist technique he
travelled widely through the Middle East and Europe.
From 1945 to 1953 he worked as a teacher at Borough Polytechnic
(now London South Bank University) in London, where his pupils
included Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Cliff Holden, Dorothy Mead,
Dennis Creffield and Miles Richmond. David Bomberg House, one of the
student halls of residences at London South Bank University, is
named in his honour.
see also:
Bomberg David
