John Banting
John Banting (12 May 1902 – 30 January 1972) was an English Surrealist artist and writer associated with the Bloomsbury Group, whose left-wing philosophy was reflected in much of his work.[1] According to his Times obituary, he was "an artist who adopted surrealist conventions for satirical purposes".[2]
Education and Bloomsbury
Born in Chelsea, Banting was educated at Chipping Campden School and initially influenced by vorticism. From 1921 he attended art classes at Vincent Square art school under Bernard Meninsky,[3] and later at the free academies in Paris. By 1925 he had established his own studio in Fitzroy Street.[4] He joined the London Group and exhibited at the Seven and Five Society.[5]
Banting first gained wider notice in the 1920s through his work on book jackets with Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press,[6] and also as the designer of the ballet set for Constant Lambert's Pomona (1926) at the Cambridge Theatre.[7] He also provided the cover for the score of Lambert's choral work 'The Rio Grande in 1929.[8] Spending time in Paris in 1930 he met some of the key figures in the surrealist movement, and their influence was reflected in his 1931 exhibition at the Wertheim Gallery.[4]
Activism and surrealism
He became friendly with Nancy Cunard and the poet Brian Howard, leading to activism in matters concerning racial politics and civil rights in the USA. He visited Harlem with Cunard in 1931 and contributed poems to her Negro Anthology (1935). Also with Cunard he visited Spain in October 1937 during the Civil War, attempting to join the (then disbanding) International Brigade in Madrid and meeting Ernest Hemmingway.[4]
In 1930s London he contributed to the London International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936[9] and worked on various projects, commercial and artistic, including sets and costumes for the Camargo Society ballet Prometheus (1936) at Sadler's Wells.[10] In 1938 he was invited to contribute to the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris by Marcel Duchamp, and this led to a solo surrealist exhibition at the Storran Gallery in October 1938.[11]
During the war he worked as an art director for the Ministry of Information's Strand Films unit alongside Dylan Thomas and Curtis Moffat, while also acting as art editor for the left wing monthly magazine Our Time, and contributing to Nancy Cunard's anthology Salvo for Russia (1942).[4]<ref<>Cunard and Banting (ed.)Salvo for Russia (1942), Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association</ref>
Banting created many artworks during this period, including:
- Figure with Heart, 1930
- Explosion, 1931
- Snake in The Grass, 1931
- Triplets, 1932
- Her Ladyship Rewarded, 1933
- One Man Band, 1934
- Negro Guitarist, 1935
- Seven Figured Exercise, 1940
Post-war
After the war Banting found himself struggling to make a living, but was helped by a grant from the Artists Benevolent Fund, secured by Julian Trevelyan. In 1946 he published A Blue Book of Conversation, a collection of illustrated satirical poems.[5] In the 1950s he moved to Rye, East Sussex, near to his friend Edward Burra. He later moved on to Hastings, where he spend much of his time writing.[12]
He died there in January 1972, aged 69, just after a solo exhibition at London's Hamet Gallery in December 1971.[13] There was a posthumous exhibition at the Edward Harvane Gallery in March 1972.
References
- ^ John Banting: A Retrospective, Oliver Bradbury and James Birch Fine Art, London, May-June 1983
- ^ 'Mr John Banting', The Times, 2 February 1972, p. 16
- ^ John Banting, portrait by Bernard Meninsky (1924), National Portrait Gallery
- ^ a b c d Matthew Gale. John Banting 1902-1972, biography for Tate Modern (1997)
- ^ a b 'John Banting', Benezit Dictionalry of Artists (2011)
- ^ Louisa Buck. 'John Banting's Designs for The Hogarth Press', in Burlington Magazine, 1985-02, Vol.127 (983), pp.91-89
- ^ Pomono, Frederick Ashton Foundation
- ^ The Rio Grande: Constant Lambert, the poem by Sacheverell Sitwell, Oxford University Press vocal score (1929)
- ^ International Surrealist Exhibition catalogue (1936)
- ^ 'Ballet At Sadler's Wells: A New Version of Prometheus', The Times, 14 October 1936, p. 12
- ^ Remy, Michel. Surrealism in Britain, (1999).
- ^ John Banting 1902-1972, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, Sept.-Oct. 1987, Art Gallery, Rye, Oct.-Dec. 1987
- ^ John Banting, Hamet Gallery catalogue, London, Dec. 1971
External links
- John Banting on Artnet
- Paintings by John Banting Archived 30 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine (Bridgeman Art Library)
- Tate Collection
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