ART
HOLDING his first exhibition at the Zwemmer Gallery is Jan Le Witt, better known for his share in a quite delightful partnership, which, for ten years, has done so much to leaven our native commercial design with a fresh and inventive fantasy it all too commonly lacks. Much the same sprightly innocence informs his painting. Albeit they lack the ultimate refinements and profundity of a Klee, these pictures share something of the blended whimsicality and sophistica- tion of that painter, by whom Le Witt has clearly been influenced. His preoccupation with texture—so becoming in his designs for re- production—degenerates at times into a mechanical fetish to disguise an absence of content ; his composition is often amorphous and un- anchored to the frame. But Le Win's colour is nearly always dis- tinguished, his manner light and unassuming, his integrity undoubted.
I found these pictures pleasant. * * Many of the pictures in the Leger Galleries' varied and delightful Valse des Fleurs exhibition are objective and charming. Many more —and these seem to me the more successful—come nearer to the sub- jective and poetic view of the East, where flower-painting developed and flourished so many centuries before it did in Europe. The ex- hibitors who have most happily caught some aspect of their subject include Sir William Nicholson, Matthew Smith, Ivon Hitchens, R. 0. Dunlop, James Fitton, Robert Bicat, Humphrey Spender and Eileen Agar. • * * * One may perhaps justifiably quarrel with the title of the St. George's Gallery's exhibition L'Ecole de Paris : The New Generation, since the oldest exhibitor was born in i87x and sixteen of the twenty- five during the last century. Against this background it must be admitted that the younger names do but re-emphasise the decline of French painting. That is not to say they are without talent—Pignon, for example, shows two tasteful watercolours ; Fougeron, Gischia and Tal Coat contribute minor works of quality—but there is an un- bridgable gap between them and the elder masters. Representative pictures by the latter have been admirably chosen. A revealing novelty is the pencil study after Cezanne by Juan Gris.
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Among the other shows that clamour for attention, mention must be made of Dame Ethel Walker's. Little remains to be said about her work that has not been said better.beforc, so I can do no more than recommend a visit to Messrs. Agnew's. It is eleven years or so since I saw an exhibition of Austin Osman Spare's. After a period of great hardship occasioned by the war he has filled the little Archer Gallery in Westbourne Grove with mixed examples of his wayward talent. His gift—perhaps his only gift—is for drawing the human face. Within these narrow limits his draughtsmanship is superb and
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