Description

Eric Gill Mounted Litho “Nude Bust” – 1938

Mounted litho “Nude Bust”

Based on an original ‘crayon dessin’ of  1927

From the 1938 portfolio “Twenty-five nudes” by Dent & Sons – London

”Signed in the plate”

Sheet measures 8.8 x 5.2 inches (22 x 13 cm)

Mount measures : 13.6 x 10.2 inch (34 x 25,5 cm)

Litho with slight overall age fading (over 80 years)

Very rare and sought after collector’s item

Info on Eric Gill :

Arthur Eric Rowton Gill (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. He is a controversial figure, with his well-known religious views and subject matter being seen as at odds with his sexual and paraphiliac behaviour and erotic art.

A deeply religious man, largely following the Roman Catholic faith, his beliefs and practices were by no means orthodox. He published numerous essays on the relationship between art and religion. He also produced a number of erotic engravings. His personal diaries describe his sexual activity in great detail including the fact that Gill sexually abused his own children, had an incestuous relationship with his sister and performed sexual acts on his dog. This aspect of Gill’s life was little known until publication of the 1989 biography by Fiona MacCarthy. As the revelations about Gill’s private life reverberated, there was a reassessment of his personal and artistic achievement. As his recent biographer sums up :  After the initial shock, as Gill’s history of adulteries, incest, and experimental connection with his dog became public knowledge in the late 1980s, the consequent reassessment of his life and art left his artistic reputation strengthened. Gill emerged as one of the twentieth century’s strangest and most original controversialists, a sometimes infuriating, always arresting spokesman for man’s continuing need of God in an increasingly materialistic civilization, and for intellectual vigour in an age of encroaching triviality.