Modern Art Oxford presents Graham Sutherland An Unfinished World on view 10 December 2011–18 March 2012.

Graham Sutherland, Dark Hill – Landscape with Hedges and Fields, 1940. Swindon Museum and Art Gallery © Estate of Graham Sutherland

An Unfinished World presents a remarkable collection of works on paper by British artist Graham Sutherland. Curated by 2011 Turner Prize nominee, George Shaw, the exhibition is a reflective exploration of the lesser-known work of one of the most compelling artists of his generation.

The exhibition concentrates on Sutherland’s early Pembrokeshire landscapes from the 1930s and 1940s, works created during his time as official WWII war artist, and after his return to Pembrokeshire in the 1970s. Far from traditional studies of landscape and environment, these works not only depict but also exude a world that is as dark as it is magical, as elusive as it is recognisable. Strangely bereft of human life, the works navigate the real and imagined; where country lanes loop into each other, horizon lines fold into foregrounds, and nothing is as it seems.

George Shaw presents these works through the lens of a contemporary painter, describing them as ‘a lament to the passing and changing landscape, a monument to the earth itself’. The exhibition shows us Sutherland as an artist as much rooted in the past as in the world before him—a world forever unfinished.

An Unfinished World brings together over eighty rarely seen works on paper from public and private collections across the UK, including National Museum Wales, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Imperial War Museum, Tate, several private collections and many regional museums.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication that includes texts by artist Brian Catling, doctoral researcher Rachel Flynn, writer Alexandra Harris, artist George Shaw and Michael Stanley, Director of Modern Art Oxford.

Modern Art Oxford
30 Pembroke Street, Oxford OX1 1BP
www.modernartoxford.org.uk

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