Long considered the doyen of British etching, Anthony Gross (RA, CBE) has been overlooked as one of this country’s finest landscape painters of the 20th century. This new exhibition from 23rd October 2021 at Goldmark hopes to redress the balance.
‘…his paintings are far too little known… An extraordinarily lively observer, he made infectious through his work his joy in the round of activities of everyday life, in both town and country.’ – Richard Morphet, ex-Keeper of the Modern Collection at the Tate Gallery (1992)
Born in 1905 to a Jewish-Hungarian mapmaker and an Irish-Italian suffragette, Gross spent his colourful life between London and the continent. Painter, printmaker, animator and illustrator, he is today best remembered for his work as an Official War Artist during the Second World War. One of the most prolific war artists, he landed in Normandy with the Allied troops on D-Day, holding his materials aloft as he waded ashore. Post-war, Gross would retire each summer to a house in Le Boulvé, leaving behind him an astonishing, decades-long record of the southwestern French landscape. He died in 1984.
As an etcher, Gross was instrumental in driving the British printmaking revolution of the 1950s and ‘60s, inspiring the likes of David Hockney; as a painter, he is yet to be afforded the fame he is due. At a time when Abstract Expressionism was taking America by storm, Gross found a style of abstraction that was quite his own – one uniquely personal, and tied inextricably to the shapes and rhythms of the natural world around him.
‘I have bought, sold, and shown the work of Anthony Gross for as long as I have been trading,’ comments Mike Goldmark: ‘I am delighted now to be representing his estate. This will be the first in a series of major exhibitions introducing Gross to a new generation of admirers, underscoring his reputation as one of our greats. A Goldmark-produced book and film will soon follow suit.’
A feature-length documentary on the life and work of Anthony Gross is underway, to be released by Goldmark Films in 2022. This will be the Royal Television Society-nominated film unit’s 25th feature documentary, joining an impressive list of film shorts and regular weekly productions for goldmark.tv.
