At the Slade Lee formed close friendships with Robert Gibbings and Paul Nash and made a significant contribution to the wood engraving revival in England between the wars. The remarkably powerful series of paintings and drawings he produced whilst serving in the Trenches in the Machine Gun Corps showed him to be in sympathy with elements of Cubism and Vorticism. These works compare favourably with the well-known war pictures by his Slade contemporaries Nash and Nevinson, but have not been seen for over ninety years. He made many more drawings whilst he was recuperating from shell shock. Between 1919 and 1922, Lee collaborated closely with Paul and John Nash producing wood engravings for the "Sun Calendar Yearbook" and "The Poetry Bookshop". He began specialising in animal subjects and his paintings, wood engravings and sculptures were bought by such notable figures as Arnold Bennett, Roger Fry and Edward Marsh. He organised the important open-air sculpture exhibition on the roof gardens of Selfridges in 1930.
During his ten-year presidency of the London Group he was centrally involved with the development of modern art in Britain, helping raise the profile of young emerging artists like Henry Moore and Victor Pasmore. A formative member of the Surrealist movement in England, he was Chairman of the 1936 International Surrealist exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries and worked tirelessly to promote the work of modern painters and sculptors. Drawing from a unique archive of the artist's papers and correspondence, this first study of Rupert Lee's life and work reveals an artist of outstanding versatility and a key player in the story of early twentieth century British art.
- ISBN10 1906593450
- ISBN13 9781906593452
- Publish Date 27 May 2010
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 19 March 2024
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Sansom & Co
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 160
- Language English