John Tunnard

Reclamation

1944

© The Estate of John Tunnard

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Not on display
Artist
John Tunnard 1900–1971
Medium
Oil paint and gouache on board
Dimensions
Support: 559 x 714 mm
frame: 692 x 848 x 60 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Purchased 1945
Reference
N05624

Display caption

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.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

N05624 RECLAMATION 1944

Inscr. ‘John Tunnard 44 0.95’ b.r. and on back ‘John Tunnard 1944’.

Oil and gouache on hardboard, 22×28 1/8 (56×71·5).
Purchased from the artist through the Redfern Gallery (Knapping Fund) 1945.


[no further details]

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II

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