David Bomberg
1890-1957
Born in Birmingham, Bomberg studied at the Slade School from 1911 to 1913 where he won the Tonks Prize for drawing. His early paintings exhibited at the London Group showed the influence of Cubism and in 1914 he had his first solo show at the Chenil Gallery. He was briefly associated with Wyndham Lewis and the Vorticists, showing at the Vorticist exhibition in 1915. At this period, his work was considered by the predominantly hostile press to be modernist in the extreme and whilst reviewing a London Group exhibition in 1920 The Outlook noted: 'Often he carries out the design in rectangular forms - as if he were conscious of his racial propensity in curves.' His parents were Polish-Jewish immigrants. He travelled extensively in Spain, Morocco, the Greek Islands and Russia. During the 1930s he adopted a radical anti Fascist stance and attempted to persuade the London Group to become an openly left-wing organization. In about 1929 Bomberg abandoned his abstract style and slowly developed a personal style of expressive brush-strokes. From 1945 to 1953 he taught at the Borough Polytechnic, Dagenham, and formed with some of his students the Borough Group, which lasted from 1947 to 1949. In 1953 he founded the Borough Bottega, in which exhibitions were held until 1955. In his lifetime Bomberg's work in his later, Expressionist style was little known or appreciated. Since his death it has come to be much more highly valued by critics and he has been regarded as the pioneer of Expressionism in Britain.
Works Available
Bargee Woman 1919
New Art Salon (Design for Poster), c. 1919