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Find out what’s upcoming at Sylvester Fine Art in our monthly newsletter.

[sylvesterfineart]

Find out what’s upcoming at Sylvester Fine Art in our monthly newsletter.

[sylvesterfineart]

Find out what’s upcoming at Sylvester Fine Art in our monthly newsletter.

[sylvesterfineart]

Find out what’s upcoming at Sylvester Fine Art in our monthly newsletter.

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Two beautiful lithographs from Miró’s portofolio entitled Les Pénalités de l’Enfer ou Les Nouvelles Hébrides inspired by an unpublished work by his good friend Robert Desnos.  Miró and Desnos were both prominent figures in the the Surrealist movement in Paris and it was there that they met in 1925.  They apparently agreed in the 1920s that Miró would at some time provide illustrations for a book by Desnos but the plans were never implemented because of the Spanish Civil War and World War ll.  During the latter Desnos was active in the French Resistance and was eventually arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and sent to various notorious concentration camps including Auschwitz and Buchenwald.  Ironically Desnos survived the war only to die of typhoid a few weeks after the liberation of the camp where he was held in 1945.

Nearly 30 years later and against that poignant background, Desnos’ widow approached Miró with the idea that he should illustrate one of the poet’s unpublished works.  They agreed to use Pénalités de l’Enfer ou Les Nouvelles Hébrides (The Penalties of Hell or The New Hebrides).  It was in fact Denos’ first prose work which had been written in Morocco in 1922.

Consequently, in 1974 Miró produced his lithographs, mainly printed in colours, for an edition limited to 220 copies printed on Arches wove paper by Arte Adrien Maeght.

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Find out what’s upcoming at Sylvester Fine Art in our monthly newsletter.

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Miró Madness at Sylvester Fine Art 

Miró: Original Lithographs and Etchings opens at Sylvester Fine Art on Saturday 12 March.  This latest exhibition from the gallery in Belsize Village features a wide range of prints from this surrealist giant of 20th century art.

Miró was a prolific print-maker throughout his life, receiving many awards for his work in this medium including the Venice Biennale print-making prize in 1954. It was through the medium of print that Miró gave voice to his fantastic universe of signs and symbols; Miró was able to create a magical world populated by strange configurations in vivid colours.

Throughout his career Miró remained true to the basic Surrealist principle of releasing the creative forces of the unconscious mind from the control of logic and reason.  He stood apart from other members of the Surrealist movement producing innovations in the field of abstraction while using none of the superficial devices of some of the other Surrealists. Much of his work has a delightful touch of playfulness although he was also able to produce work of a more somber or savage quality like that inspired by the Spanish Civil War.

This selling exhibition will comprise work from a number of well-known and lesser-known editions, including Les Pénalités de l’Enfer, Cartones, Le Courtisan Grotesque and Maravillas Variacionas Acrósticas en el Jardin de Miró.

Miró: Original Lithographs and Etchings will run until 10 April 2016.

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For further information please contact Andrea Sylvester on 020 7443 5990 or email andrea@sylvesterfineart.co.uk

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Find out what’s upcoming at Sylvester Fine Art in our monthly newsletter! 

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Alison Oldham has featured our Christopher P Wood exhibition in the Ham & High, take a look! 

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Accompanying our current Christopher P Wood exhibition is the work of renowned British ceramicist JIM MALONE, here he is in his own words.

Iconic Japanese potter and designated Living National Treasure Shoji Hamada, said there were two kinds of pot. The first he compared to hot house plants, the second to the tree growing on the mountainside. In his own work he aspired towards the latter and I, in so much as I am able, have endeavoured to do likewise. This has involved adopting a particular approach to both work and lifestyle in general. I knew from the start that what Michael Cardew referred to as a deliberately willed injection of personality would not do. This was not the way to make worthy pots.

I had looked at those historical examples I admired and loved so much, be they sixteenth century Korean, thirteenth century Chinese, or medieval English, and realised that their essential beauty and vitality was a direct product of the working environment in which they were made. I knew that if I was to have any hope of achieving even a hint of such breadth and character in my own work I would have to create for myself (in so far as was possible in the late twentieth century) a similar living and working situation.

I left the hot house of London, where I had been a student in the late nineteen seventies, and set up a workshop, initially in North Wales and later in Cumbria working, as I do now, within sight of the Cumbrian Fells. This involves a necessarily slower pace of life, in touch with essential values, from which pots can grow, naturally and unforced and free from the superficiality of urban demands. Such work speaks with a quieter voice, does not try to shock or disturb, and is neither concerned with nor affected by current trends. This work is a reflection of my life and my concerns to understand and communicate beauty, as I see it, through pottery form.

This exhibition is the very best work from the last two firings of my kiln. The first, just before Christmas, was a little cooler in the first chamber and the lower parts of the second chamber, suiting perfectly the needs of those pots with brushed slip and iron or cobalt painting. The resulting softness to the glaze surface (even dryness in some cases) allows the slip and pigment to speak with a strong voice. Too hard or shiny a glaze and the effect is lost.

The second firing, in late April, was an altogether hotter affair. The searing white flame, in places in excess of 1350°C, produced rich, black tenmokus, breaking to rust red on rims and edges, together with that rich surface texture and depth so essential to the character of good tenmoku and yet so difficult to achieve.

In an article I once wrote A potter’s life is not easy. The hours are long and often lonely. But when he has played his part well, and the kiln has been kind, the good pot is a thing of lasting beauty and, as Bernard Leach once said, …worth any sacrifice, including life itself. This holds true for me still for this is not what I do; this is what I am.

Jim Malone 2008

Jim Malone Slab bottle; brushed slip with iron rushes design and copper splashes £650

Jim Malone Bowl; brushed slip, iron decoration & copper splashes £300

Jim Malone Globular bottle; brushed slip, iron and cobalt painting with copper splashes  £650

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Following the wonderful launch of our Christopher P Wood exhibition, we thought we would share Ian Skelly’s thoughts on the the artist and his work. 

What does a painter paint when he paints a landscape, the landscape or his Soul?  If a painting “works” then the image is certainly more than just the outer description.  It resonates at a deeper level.  Even so, in this age that does not believe in Soul, it is bold indeed to abandon that outer form altogether and explore only what lies beneath.  Yet that is what Christopher Wood has sought do.

He paints honest paintings.  Look at them as you might those by Giorgione or Giotto, those early Italian Renaissance Masters.  They were far from descriptive.  They conjured images from a vase mythology of the heart, seeing the artist at the interface between two worlds, enabling the invisible to become visible.  Chris Wood works in this same, neglected tradition, exploring the collective dream but he lives in a very different world from theirs.  So the same simplicity in his images stands in stark contract and challenges the rampant ego-mania of our day.

Christopher was born and bred in Leeds as individualism tightened its grip on our outlook.  As it reached those new heights in the eighties he studied in London alongside the stags who would soon become the emperors of Nineties Modern Art.  Early on he sensed their clothes were thin and in a break that took some guts, he left their self-perpetuating maelstrom and returned to his roots to read his won path, to hone what is now a refined technique and to speak with his own voice.

Some twenty years on his technique is still unfashionable, depending as it does upon skill and craft.  He takes great care to prime his canvases, often four times over and blends his paints in special ways to produce the satin finish to his skies.  He also builds his pictures in such a way that once begun each must be finished in a single sitting which creates a tension that is emotionally draining.  

And the voice?  It speaks of reality as rooted in the spiritual realm. It explores that level of experience which is unfettered by the outer metering of time and space in landscapes which echo an archaic depth and luminous mystery.  They resonate with symbols and strange eminences.  They are the places where thoughts arise.

High above the rooftops of semi-detached suburban Leeds, Wood continues to open his brightly coloured windows onto the world within this world in the hope that treasure may be found.  They invite a journey to be made and offer communion with the miracle of wonders we call Creation.  Questions will find their answers in the quiet contemplation of them. For when this painter paints his landscapes, he paints of the marvels.

 Ian Skelly 2007, Writer and broadcaster

Photograph courtesy of Simon Wilder

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Find out what’s upcoming at Sylvester Fine Art in 2016 in our monthly newsletter! 

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Christopher P Wood – Painter of Magical Landscapes

Sylvester Fine Art is delighted to present an exhibition of paintings by the artist Christopher P Wood.  Launching on Saturday 16 January 2016, the show will present Wood’s vision of “an earthly paradise”.

Wood is a landscape artist who looks beyond the obvious and presents a visualisation that speaks of a reality, rooted in the spiritual realm.  As Laura Gascoigne of The Spectator wrote:  “Fantasy, as an ingredient of visual art, has fared badly under modernism and post-modernism……But those like me who still believe in make believe - who like to stand in front of pictures and dream - can take hope from this work.”  Wood’s landscapes bring forth imagined worlds that are built on ancient foundations which have clearly been informed by his place of birth and where he lives to this day; Leeds.  The endless skies and dramatic natural landscapes of Yorkshire can be found somewhere between Wood’s fantasy and reality.

Wood’s paintings demonstrate a skill and craft that has been honed over the years and he continues to present us with paintings that are honest.  As Ian Skelly pointed out, “They invite a journey to be made and offer communion with the miracle of wonders we call Creation.  Questions will find their answers in the quiet contemplation of them.  For when this painter paints his landscapes, he paints of the marvels.”

The artist Alan Davie once said of Wood’s paintings: “….you are positively one of the greats of the art world today in this country.  I find your images Magical”.

The magic starts on Saturday 16 January 2016 and will continue until 14 February 2016 and prices for the paintings start from £1,500.

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For more information please contact Andrea Sylvester on 020 7443 5990 or email her at andrea@sylvesterfineart.co.uk