Edward Burra: Twentieth-Century Eye (Paperback)
- Artist: Edward Burra
- Published: 2008
- Publisher: Pimlico (Random House), London
- Edition: -
- Format: Paperback
- Height: 26cm
- Pages: 512
- Illustrations: Illustrated in black & white
£16.99
Add to basketEdward Burra: Twentieth-Century Eye (Paperback)
Jane Stevenson will be giving a talk and signing copies of this book on Thursday 19th January. For further information view our Events page.
Edward Burra never followed the fashion: in the thirties, when modern art was dominated by abstraction and landscape, he painted people; in the sixties, when landscape was completely out of fashion, he started to find it interesting. His life was an unusual one: profoundly disabled, he lived with his parents, and was in constant pain. Only when he was painting could he forget his body. At the same time he was a man with a rich and full life. He was a letter-writer of genius, writing every afternoon to a wide circle of friends. His letters are camp, witty, full of the energy and delight in life which he could not express physically. Inventive, entertaining, and extraordinarily original, his writing expresses a man who combined profound personal loyalty with distaste for any kind of emotional grandstanding. This is Jane Stevenson’s first biography. It will of course be welcomed by historians of modern British art, but equally readers of Stevenson’s fiction will delight in her portrait of this wonderfully original man and his circle: it has, she says, been like eavesdropping on a fifty-year conversation.
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Artists Biography
(b London, 29 March 1905; d Hastings, 22 Oct 1976). English painter, illustrator and stage designer. As a student at the Chelsea Polytechnic (1921–3) and the Royal College of Art (1923–5) he became a talented figure draughtsman. In the second half of the decade he spent much time in France painting intricately detailed urban scenes, which depicted the low life of Toulon and Marseille. Works such as the watercolour Toulon (1927; priv. col., see Causey, cat. no. 33) were executed in a meticulously finished and vividly coloured decorative style. Burra usually used watercolour and tempera and occasionally collage oil paints.
