Still Life

Geoffrey Tibbie 1909–1952

T00946 Still Life 1929

Not inscribed.
Canvas, 22 x 30 (56 x 76).
Presented by A. C. Sewter 1967.
Coll: A. C. Sewter, from the artist c.1939.
Exh: Manchester City Art Gallery, July-August 1958 (1) as ‘Still Life’ c.1930; British Art and the Modern Movement 1930–40, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, October-November 1962 (149).

This still life is sometimes dated c. 1930, but the artist told A. C. Sewter that it was painted while he was still a student at the Slade School which he left in the summer of 1929. It already prefigures to some extent the Objective Abstraction style which he was to develop later in the 1930s in association with Rodrigo Moynihan, Graham Bell and others. He painted his first completely non-representational works in about September 1933, then moved away from non-representational painting again in the winter of 1936–7. The earliest of his Objective Abstraction paintings are said to have been characterised by broad, loosely painted brush-strokes. Unfortunately none of his works in this style, of which he was the principal pioneer, seem to have survived; as far as is known, they were all subsequently destroyed or over-painted.

Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1967–1968, London 1968.