Scene 01: figures in a desolate landscape

£4,500

Scene 01: figures in a desolate landscape

£4,500

Austin Osman Spare (1886 - 1956) was a British artist whose depictions were based in the aesthetics of Art Nouveau and the Symbolist Movement. Spare was known for his otherworldly, allegorical depictions of occult imagery. Spare's works are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Princeton University Art Museum in New Jersey, among others. Spare was unusual in that he sold his sketchbooks; artists usually retain these, containing seminal ideas for more resolved works. Spare was not possessive about his sketchbooks, viewing them as extensions of his own published occult-philosophical works. This suite of drawing by Spare represents his usages for sketchbooks, as a medium for inspiration to unspool sequentially onto pages, rendered in his quasi-automatic style. The sketchbook caries from fluent ludic outpourings to finely finished sequences, to more didactic sketchbooks intended as instructive for students at the Austin Osman Spare School of Draughtsmanship. Others contain preparatory sketches for larger works, and even a combined sketch/scrapbook with pieces collaged over full-paged drawings of c.1954. The present sketchbook drawings reveal a glimpse into the mind and soul of an extraordinary artist.