Ben Nicholson: From the Studio
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, West Sussex

WHEN Ivan Turgenev wrote in 1861 that “the drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over 10 pages in a book,” he pointed to the separateness of the two experiences.

The work of British painter Ben Nicholson has the rare quality of being formally sophisticated and at the same time visually direct and approachable — devoid of mystique, it “speaks” for itself — hence requiring few, if any, words to describe it and certainly none to unravel its “meaning.”

Nicholson himself observed once in reference to his own work: “The kind of painting which I find exciting is not necessarily representational or non-representational, but it is musical and architectural,” adding that “whether this visual relationship is slightly more or slightly less abstract is, for me, beside the point.”