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John Tunnard  1900-1971

John Tunnard Reclamation 1944
© The estate of John Tunnard
Reclamation  1944

Oil and gouache on board
support: 559 x 714 mm frame: 692 x 848 x 60 mm
painting

Purchased 1945

N05624
Tunnard moved to Cornwall in 1930 to run a hand-blocked printed silk business with his wife. He became a leading abstract painter in the 1930s and was partly influenced by Surrealism. From 1940-45 he served as a coastguard. His early work constantly revealed an interest in the minutiae of nature, but in the 1940s technological shapes entered his visual vocabulary. Semi-transparent forms and planes intersect like those in Naum Gabo's constructions. Here the title may refer to an imagined future engineering project. Or, with its overtones of triumph and victory, it may herald the end of the war.
 (From the display caption August 2004)