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JAMES HYMAN GALLERY
Leon Kossoff (b.1926)
Please scroll down for further information. Leon Kossoff (b.1926) Head Study Charcoal and pastel on paper 25.7 x 20.5 cms (10 x 8 inches) c.1958 Provenance: Private Collection, Switzerland Leon Kossoff’s first exhibitions at Helen Lessore’s famous Beaux Arts Gallery took place in 1957 and 1959 and included not only heavily worked paintings, primarily in earthy browns, but also brooding drawings in heavy black charcoal. These extremely rare early drawings included a number of small heads, in which the form appears to glimmer out from a dense black void. Unidentified, when first shown, and simply catalogued as ‘Portrait’ or ‘Head Study’, these drawings included some of the artist’s earliest surviving self-portraits as well as portraits of family members. The present drawing is typical of this ‘black realism’ and may also be compared to the portraits being produced at the same time by Kossoff’s close friend of this period, Frank Auerbach. In this presentation of the subject’s head, emerging from darkness, it is also worth considering the handling of charcoal by one of Kossoff’s most important teachers David Bomberg, as well as the ways in which Francis Bacon paintings of the mid 1950s developed new forms of portraiture in which the head is set against a dusty black ground. Kossoff's efforts in working and reworking these drawings often led to the erosion of the paper surface, necessitating the addition of patches of paper. It also, characteristically, led to torn edges, as in the present work. For the artist, an intimate knowledge of the subject is all important as he grapples with trying to convey his response to what is before him, yet for the viewer it may be argued that the power of the work lies in something more universal. No setting is given. There are no hints of clothing, and there is even ambiguity about the subject’s gender. As a result the portrait subject becomes almost a symbol, a beacon of glimmering light in a world of darkness, a battered survivor of some powerful assault. For further information on Kossoff’s black drawings, see James Hyman, ‘Negative Dialectics: Black Realism from Picasso and Bacon to Auerbach and Kossoff’, in The Battle for Realism (Yale University Press, 2001) This item is sold. Please click here if you wish to buy or sell a work by this artist. | ||||||||
