Latest news with #EdwardBurra
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Edward Burra: Tate Britain curator on ‘queer life, joy and desire' in artist's work ahead of major retrospective
A top art curator has reflected on the unique appeal to LGBTQ art lovers of Edward Burra ahead of an exhibition of the artist's work at the Tate Britain next month. Edward Burra – Ithell Colquhoun, which runs from 13 June–19 October 2025, will showcase Burra's work alongside the works of fellow British great Ithell Colquhoun. This will be the first retrospective of Burra's work in London in 40 years. Burra, according to Tate reps, is renowned for his vibrant, satirical scenes of the uninhibited urban underworld and queer culture during the 'Roaring Twenties.' Thomas Kennedy, Curator, Modern British Art, Tate Britain tells Attitude: 'Edward Burra was a British artist who vividly captured the queer nightlife of Paris and the south of France during the 'Roaring Twenties'. 'In Paris, he immersed himself in gay-friendly bars and clubs lining streets like Rue de Lappe. His work Rue de Lappe (1930) depicts men dancing together in a club, embodying the era's spirit of queer liberation. 'He also painted sailors on leave in the sun-drenched south of France, as seen in Three Sailors at a Bar (1930). Burra and his bohemian friends were 'sailor mad', incited by the risqué stories found in French books and films. 'Though Burra's sexuality remains ambiguous – he lived at a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK – his art pulses with depictions of queer life, joy and desire.' For more information about The post Edward Burra: Tate Britain curator on 'queer life, joy and desire' in artist's work ahead of major retrospective appeared first on Attitude.
The Guardian
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Jazz, Paris and war's brutality: the radical watercolours of Edward Burra, British art's great unknown
On any objective reading, Edward Burra occupies a distinguished place in the history of 20th-century British art. His work, especially his watercolours of demi-monde life in interwar Paris and New York, is a distinct and vivid record of the times. His paintings are held in major institutions – as is his extensive archive, which is housed at Tate Britain in London. And yet he remains 'one of the great known unknowns of modern British art', according to Thomas Kennedy, the curator of a new retrospective show at Tate Britain. It is being held more than half a century on from Burra's last show at the Tate in 1973, three years before he died aged 71. There are lots of reasons for Burra's 'unknown' status, explains Kennedy. 'He worked alone, and not being part of a defined group doesn't help to place an artist. But probably more important is the fact he absolutely hated talking about his work.' Kennedy cites some excruciating documentary footage (also from the early 1970s) illustrating Burra's painful reluctance to engage with questions about art. 'He just hated that stuff and would call art 'fart' and things like that. Apparently, he walked through that Tate show as if wearing blinkers, not looking at the work and just wanting to get it over with.' The exhibition runs alongside a parallel show of works by Ithell Colquhoun, another radical British artist who, like Burra, challenged artistic conventions and explored parallel ideas of identity and sexuality in surrealist work that often reflected her occult beliefs. The two defining features of Burra's early life – he was born in 1905 – were the wealth of his family (prominent in banking) and the fact he suffered from extremely poor health. This combination resulted in him later being able to travel – to France and Spain, the United States and Mexico – then return home to Rye in East Sussex, where he spent most of his life, to recuperate after his exertions and paint the things he had seen. His illnesses – rheumatoid arthritis and the blood disease spherocytosis among other conditions – also helped dictate the nature of his art in that it was physically easier for him to work with watercolours flat on a table than with oils at an easel. 'As a watercolourist he pushed the boundaries of a traditionally delicate medium to create bold graphic works, rich in detail,' says Kennedy. His illness also informed his empathy for those on the fringes of society and in his subject matter he engaged with some of the 20th century's most significant social, political and cultural events. 'After Paris in the roaring 20s and the Harlem Renaissance, he sort of pivoted to depict the violence of the Spanish civil war and then the second world war, before taking on British landscapes and reflections on postwar industrialisation and environmental degradation.' While Burra was publicly reticent about his art, the Tate show's exploration of his archives serves to deepen understanding of the man. As well as letters there are his gramophone records – mostly jazz – books and calendars he kept that show his obsessive cinema-going, sometimes seeing several films a day in French and German as well as English. 'Bringing these sources together is quite revealing,' says Kennedy. 'It all adds to the tapestry of his influences and what emerges is a socially conscious art that is warmly satirical while also being willing to confront the darker side of life.' Three Sailors at a Bar, 1930Burra's sexuality is ambiguous, but his work in the 20s and 30s often reflected queer culture and sensibility. While this image of a bar in the south of France is among his more explicitly queer work, it also reflected a general sense of sexual liberation among Burra's circle in the roaring 20s. Minuit Chanson, 1931 (main image above)In this Parisian music shop where you could pay to listen to a gramophone record, Burra's vibrant street scene celebrates its diverse clientele. In characteristic fashion, he deploys a satirical eye to heighten his subject matter rather than to cruelly caricature it. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Beelzebub, c 1937Burra loved Spain and was devastated by the outbreak of the civil war, as he was to be again by the second world war a few years later. In this painting, he transforms historical Spanish conquistador imagery into a grotesque tableau accompanied by an unnerving sexual charge. Cornish Clay Mines, 1970In his later years, Burra's travel was restricted to motoring around Britain, and here he presents a commentary on postwar car culture, featuring ghost-like figures and advertising icons, such as the Michelin Man, all the while acknowledging his own participation in modernity's environmental depredations. Near Whitby, Yorkshire, 1972 One of Burra's final works shows an empty road disappearing into the fog. With lighter applications of watercolour than his earlier graphic style, possibly due to his declining health, the painting's suggestion of moving into the unknown is typical of his later works in which he seems to be searching for moments of quiet reflection. Edward Burra – Ithell Colquhoun is at Tate Britain, London, 13 June to 19 October.
Spectator
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
The gloriously impure world of Edward Burra
Every few years the shade of Edward Burra is treated to a Major Retrospective. The pattern is long established: Edward who? Forgotten genius, sui generis, well known for being unknown save by beardy centenarians and art tarts with ginny voices. Why have I never heard of this man? LGBT-ish avant la lettre, Polari-ish. After the show inhumation beckons again and he will disappear into an obscurity that cannot be relieved until the curatocracy once more lets loose the dogs of hype. George Melly and Dan Farson are no longer around to peal his name and Jane Stevenson's impeccable and often funny biography suffers from its subject's being a forgotten genius, sui generis, unknown save… etc. In later years Burra was the very picture of a different neglect: physical. He gave a fine impression of being an embittered down-and-out: a seamy, slight invalid, reedy-voiced, equipped with a tramp flask, 40 Gauloises and a lag's hairdo. A perfect role for David Bradley. Although he was no Joë Bousquet – 'Ma blessure existait avant moi: je suis né pour l'incarner' ('My wound existed before me: I was born to embody it') – he was nonetheless a super-valetudinarian. He suffered an enlarged spleen, jaundice, anaemia, rheumatic fever, chilblains, crippling arthritis, more or less permanent pain, depression. His background was provincial upper-middle-class. His animosity towards Rye's tweeness fuelled him – and he knew it, he spent most of his life there. He was supported by his devoted family of local grandees. These circumstances might have been conferred on him so that he could devote his surprisingly long life to his art. He was no joiner, he loitered uncommitted, fag between his lips, on the fringes of the British Surrealist Group.
Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Sussex Modernism review — plotting the future of art from the South Downs
If you really wanted to skewer an artist in 1914, calling them 'provincial' was pretty effective. The newness-obsessed Vorticists used it as the ultimate insult, declaring London the centre — or vortex — of Britain's artistic universe. This new exhibition at Towner in Eastbourne, which places the first edition of the Vorticist publication BLAST at the start, and proceeds to thumb its nose at it, counters that view to look at artists, mostly between 1910 and 1980, working in or with a relation to Sussex (obvious contenders such as Lee Miller, Edward Burra and Gluck are joined by much lesser-known names, such as Mary Stormont or Damian Le Bas, who worked in a style he called 'gypsy dada') who could also broadly be described as
