The Grosvenor School
Claude Flight Speed c.1922
4 blocks edition of 50. 22.6 x 28.8 cm
Off white Japanese paper. 1st layer Yellow ochre. 2nd Cobalt blue. 3rd Vermilion. 4th Prussian blue.
I have been influenced by the work of the Grosvenor School artists. In particular, their simplification and stylisation when recording movement in everyday scenes and the limited use of three or four overlapping colours to create additional hues.
This print is unusual because it’s printed on the reverse side and Flight would often mount prints on yellow inked paper backing and sometimes dark toned paper, to modulate the image tonally.
A print by its handmade method of production can have 'patches of bald areas' and modulation of intensity and tone can be achieved with hand burnishing.
Claude Flight taught linocut at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art from 1926 - 30 and his methods were a big influence on his students. Most of the Grosvenor School linocut printmakers used three or four blocks, rarely reduction printing. Renowned for their application of movement and vibrant colours, they responded to Futurist Marinetti's call for art to reflect modern (1920’s) society, in a very direct way. They favoured using thin (tissue) Japanese papers which are robust.
Flight often did not date his prints, because artists would print in batches depending on popularity, in a print on demand arrangement. The Futurists used multiple viewpoints and interpenetrating planes to convey busy movement. Flight used curvilinear distortion and cropped images to suggest movement.
Cyril E Power The Sunshine Roof. c 1934 Linocut
4 block: 1. Cream, 2. Orange, 3. Mid green, 4. Dark green in that order.
Linocut has been seen as a rather lowly crude and simplistic art form, exploited by the German Expressionists: Erich Heckel and Christian Rohlfs. In the UK Horace Brodzky and Gaudier Brzeska, (Wrestlers 1914). But for Claude Flight it was a 'modern medium for a modern age,' linocut was expressive of the 'speed and dynamism' advocated by the Italian Futurists.
Cyril E Power, Folk Dance Linocut 1932
22 x 24.6 cm
4 block: 1. Peach, 2. Red, 3. Dark grey, 4. Black. On off-white Japanese paper.
The print does not contain solid blocks of opaque colour, there are subtle colour patches where previous colour layers show through top layers. Transparency can be achieved by adding extender.
Flight instructed to use equal amounts of detail on each block and to ignore the old guideline of the first block being a dark outline with subsequent layers being the colour infills.
Key exponents of linocut were: Sybil Andrews, Dorrit Black, Ethel Spowers, Claude Flight, Cyril Power, Lill Tschudi, Edith Lawrence. There were lots of other students who achieved recognition from Claude Flights teaching.
Sybil Andrews, The Winch, 1930
3 blocks 1. Chinese Orange. 2. Veridian. 3 Dk Blue
18.4 x 28.4 cm Edition of 50.
Most of the Grosvenor School printmakers made editions of 50 or 60 but printed them in batches on demand. What is evident from these examples is that the ink was transparent, to create addtional colours and tones where overlap occurs. Extender medium is added to the colour ink to create transparency, I add wax driers to speed the drying process, and will impatiently print wet on wet to see the outcome quickly.
As I have become more familiar with the process of making linocut prints I have adopted Claude Flights print on demand approach to producing editions. I publish test pieces online to establish whether they are worth editioning and then depending on popularity produce batches of up to 10, for an edition of 30 to 100.
Bibliography
Carey F. & Griffiths A. Avant-Garde British Printmaking 1914 - 1960 BMP 1990
Leaper H. Sybil Andrews and the Grosvenor School Linocuts. Osborne Samuel 2015
Ackley C. S. British Prints from the Machine Age. Rhythms of Modern Life 1914 - 1939. Thames and Hudson 2008
