PRUNELLA CLOUGH (1919-1999)

In 1958 Bryan Robertson offered Clough a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Billed for the autumn of 1960, it gave her eighteen months to come to terms with what she called ‘those great wide walls’. She began working on a larger scale and gradually moved towards a more insistent use of abstraction. In October 1958, while visiting an ‘Expo’ in Brussels, her attention was caught by the sight of objects seen through large sheets of glass, and therefore slightly distorted. This gave rise to six paintings, called Landscape through Glass, numbered I to VI, and all were shown in the Whitechapel exhibition. They perfectly caught what Robertson desired. ‘What I look for in any period of art,’ he admitted towards the end of his career, ‘is imaginative energy, radiance, equilibrium, composure, colour, light, vitality, poise, buoyancy, a transcendent ability to soar above life and not be subjugated to it.’

We are very grateful to Frances Spalding for preparing this catalogue entry.