ART
ALL but four of Miss Anna Mayerson's recent paintings, now on view at the Leger Galleries, are given the generic title " Studies in Movement." The movement she seeks, however, is not that of the high-speed camera, but of an intellectual and formal order. To this end the thing seen is dislocated and subsequently reintegrated by means of dark, interlocking lines which recall the stained-glass window "leading" of Picasso's 1931-2 period. Indeed her work, which is essentially Parisian in its origins, shows some of those weaknesses that vitiate contemporary French painting. At its worst, that is to say it is liable to degenerate into mere pattern-making without conviction ; at its best it is courageous, monumental, bold and rich in colour. In most of these pictures the best predominates.
A triple bill at the Leicester Galleries. Mr. Gilbert Spencer's scenes of country life have an unassuming and ingenuous air. One feels that he disdains any trick that may distort his vision and it is this honesty of purpose which constitutes his main strength. He is sometimes sidetracked by a love of detail, sometimes by an insensi- tivity in his figure drawing ; nearly always the quality of his paint is unpleasant. Always his sympathy for his subject is evident, how- ever, and in his heavy, brooding summers, and in small pictures like Nos. 83 and 99, I find him most attractive. Mr. Charles Murray appears by comparison baroque and bitter. Or most of the time at least, for it must be confessed that his imagination leads him in diverse directions—sometimes to a preoccupation with paleolithic cave-drawings (No. 36 is entitled Real Art), sometimes to a lively jeu d'esprit like The Filly, and sometimes to a harsh and mordant picture of persecution and suffering. On occasions he comes dan- gerously near to rhetoric, but when be does not overstate his theme —In No. 59, for example, The Migration, which I find wholly admirable—he has great power and individuality. Also to be seen are Picasso's etchings for "Buffon." These illustrations reveal one of the happiest aspects of his capricious nature: they show an immense vitality, an astonishing diversity of technique, an exceptional grasp of the medium and an incomparable richness of effect. M. H. MIDDLETON.
Previous page
