"Anything that the eye or the mind’s eye sees with intensity and excitement will do for a start. A gasometer is as good as a garden, probably better" – Prunella Clough
Prunella Clough is widely appreciated as one of the most significant British artists of the post war period. Clough’s work is distinctive and private and yet always responsive to what was going on around her – artistically and visually. As Mel Gooding states in his catalogue introduction to the show “Prunella Clough seemed incapable of making an image that was not remarkable for its utter singularity”.
This major exhibition on two floors at Annely Juda Fine Art spans her career from the early 1940s until the late 1990s prior to her death in 1999. It includes many previously unseen works that she had kept in her studio for her personal reference and collection.
Over 60 paintings, drawings and reliefs demonstrate the character- istic development of her work through her various influences - notably cubism and European abstraction. Included in the exhibition is a stunning selection of early unseen social realist paintings of industrial scenes and factory workers.
Her muted and narrow palette in these works is contrasted by her later abstract works often using bright colours and sometimes found objects. They reveal her continual and personal preoccupation with formal qualities – composition, colour and texture – and her delight in the edginess and abstraction of everyday objects and experiences.
This is the sixth one-person exhibition of her work at Annely Juda Fine Art who have represented her and her estate since 1989. It follows the touring exhibition held at Tate Britain, Norwich Castle Museum and Abbot Hall Art Gallery March 2007 – April 2008.
Prunella Clough was born in London in 1919 – she studied at Chelsea School of Art and during the war worked as a draughtsman of maps and charts. She was a highly influential artist and teacher to the post-war generation. In 1999, three months before her death, she won the prestigious Jerwood painting prize.
