Ben Nicholson
Ben Nicholson ( born April 10, 1894 in Denham in Buckinghamshire, † February 6, 1982 in London) was a British painter and object artist. Nicholson was the son of the painter William Nicholson and the brother of the painter Nancy Nicholson. From 1938 to 1951 he was married to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth.
Life
Nicholson attended Gresham 's School in Norfolk and 1911 for a semester, the Slade School of Art in London. Between 1911 and 1918 he lived in Tours, Milan, Madeira, London, North Wales and in Pasadena.
1920 Nicholson married the artist Winifred Roberts, with whom he had three children. In 1925 he joined the group " 7 and 5" in London, which he left in 1936 but again. Member of the " Unit One ", he was in 1933. In 1938 he married his second wife, Barbara Hepworth, with whom he also had three children, they were triplets, born in 1934. Between 1932 and 1939 he lived in London and had contacts with Piet Mondrian and Naum Gabo. 1939 moved into the couple 's residence in St Ives in Cornwall, where he lived until 1955 and where around him and Barbara Hepworth a center of abstract art, the so-called " Penwith Society of Artists " formed. The Divorce of Barbara Hepworth was 1951.
A retrospective of his work was exhibited in 1955 at the Tate Gallery in London. In 1958 he settled with his third wife, whom he married in 1957, the Swiss photographer Felicitas Vogler in Castagnola on Lake Maggiore. In 1971, he left her alone and went to Cambridge. The divorce took place in 1977. His last place of residence as of 1972 Hampstead was in London, where he worked until his death at the studio.
In his work, he was influenced by Pablo Picasso and the Dutchman Piet Mondrian. From the latter comes the stylistic concept of Neo, which was also decisive for Nicholson's works, or the vertical stress and the horizontal as well as yellow, red and blue as the primary color and the colorless stage white, gray and black. Until 1937 he was a member of the group " Abstraction- Création ".
Works (selection)
Nicholson painted landscapes and still lifes as well as reliefs.