Prunella Clough: Regions Unmapped

Description

Prunella Clough (1919-1999) was one of the best and most original artists to emerge in the second half of the twentieth century. This book celebrates her outstanding contribution to British art providing, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of Clough's entire career. Situating the development of Clough's art within the trajectory of her life, Frances Spalding explores the key themes and inspirations that informed the artist's work. The author's unique access to hitherto unpublished letters, a journal which Clough kept in the late 1940s and notebooks from the artist's visits around England, combined with her extensive knowledge of twentieth-century British art, ensures a ground-breaking and unique account of Clough's life and work. Themes such as the importance of place in Clough's oeuvre, her interests in Surrealism, Neo-Romanticism and Abstract Expressionism run alongside broader debates such as the artist's position within the English art scene and her critical reception. Her relationship with her aunt, designer and architect Eileen Gray, is given due attention, as are other key alliances in her life. With its breadth of material, Prunella Clough: Regions Unmapped will appeal to a wide spectrum of readers from those with a general interest in the artist and the period to curators, collectors, dealers and academics.

Frances Spalding is an art historian, critic and biographer. She is the author of a centenary history of the Tate and of British Art since 1900, as well as much-acclaimed biographies of Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Gwen Raverat, the poet Stevie Smith and of John and Myfanwy Piper. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art and Professor of Art History at Newcastle University, and in 2005 was awarded a CBE for services to literature.

Winner, Paul Mellon Centre Publication Grant A marvel of compression and lucidity, a welcome introduction but also a scholarly interpretation, and a fitting tribute to a remarkable artist. Andrew Lambirth Spalding is a patient guide; she draws out the significance of the artist's choices and provides sensitive readings of individual paintings. Nancy Campbell, TLS One of six books shortlisted for Apollo's Book of the Year; with Frances Spalding's eminently readable study, the painter finally receives due attention in print.