Edward Burra never followed the fashion: in the thirties, when modern art was dominated by abstraction and landscape, he painted people; in the sixties, when landscape was completely out of fashion, he started to find it interesting. His life was an unusual one: profoundly disabled, he lived with his parents, and was in constant pain. Only when he was painting could he forget his body. At the same time, he was a man with a rich and full life. He was a letter-writer of genius, writing every afternoon to a wide circle of friends. His letters are camp, witty, full of the energy and delight in life which he could not express physically. Inventive, entertaining, and extraordinarily original, his writing expresses a man who combined profound personal loyalty with distaste for any kind of emotional grandstanding. This is Jane Stevenson's first biography. It will of course be welcomed by historians of modern British art, but equally readers of Stevenson's fiction will delight in her portrait of this wonderfully original man and his circle: it has, she says, been like eavesdropping on a fifty-year conversation.
- ISBN10 0224078755
- ISBN13 9780224078757
- Publish Date 15 November 2007
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 22 February 2012
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Jonathan Cape Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 512
- Language English