David Bomberg was born in Birmingham to Polish immigrants, he moved to London at the age of four. He was apprenticed to a lithographer before studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. He responded strongly to avant-garde currents in art - particularly to the rise of abstraction - but was never long associated with any school or movement. In 1914 however he started to produce work of an almost totally abstract nature. After World War I his style changed and became less angular. He moved away from London and spent several years travelling in Palestine, Spain and Cyprus. He began to develop as a landscape painter, using strong blocks of colour. The forceful use of charcoal in his drawings reflects his sense of the menace of landscape, some of his own bitterness, and the feeling recurrent in his work of struggling against a hostile environment. Bomberg was neglected by the art establishment during his lifetime, and the recognition of his position as one of the foremost draughtsman of the twentieth century was only gained after his death.