COIL OF ROPE 1952
Prunella Clough (1919 – 1999)
Details
- Dimension
- 56.5 X 39.5 CM
- Media
- GOUACHE ON PAPER
- Accession number
- P195
Summary
Prunella Clough was born in London, the niece of the noted furniture designer Eileen Gray. She studied at Chelsea School of Art, and when war interrupted her studies, worked as a mapping and engineering draughtswoman, from 1940–45. After the war, she visited various fishing ports on the East Anglian coast, and much of her work of the period centred on her interest in the working life of the dockers and fishermen she observed. She was a consummate printmaker, using her own printing press to create subtle and poetic images, often combining the organic with the geometric. This gouache of a coil of rope takes a robust piece of working material and transforms it into a semi-ethereal abstraction, its hard outlines softened by the shallow and indefinite ground surrounding it. Throughout the 1950s Clough was part of an artistic group which included Michael Ayrton, John Minton, John Craxton and the poet Dylan Thomas.
Thresholds, British Council 2010
Glossary
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Abstraction
To abstract means to remove, and in the art sense it means that artist has removed or withheld references to an object, landscape or figure to produce a simplified or schematic work. This method of creating art has led to many critical theories; some theorists considered this the purest form of art: art for art’s sake. Unconcerned as it is with materiality, abstraction is often considered as representing the spiritual.
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Gouache
A paint composed of water-soluble pigment, which has been ground in gum, usually gum Arabic, like watercolour, but made opaque with the addition of white pigment. Creates effects similar to those of oil paint, but lightens in colour during drying and cracks if used thickly.