EXHIBITIONS
Recent Paintings and Drawings by Clifford Hall
Clifford Hall's thirteenth solo exhibition was held at the Wilton Gallery, 2 Motcomb Street, Belgrave Square, London SW1, October 20th - November 26th.
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1. The Bicycle - Honfleur
2. The Man on the Barrow
3. Girl in a Blue Slip
4. Maureen
5. Death of a Bullfighter
6. At the Dressmakers
7. Eva
8. Makarska - Yugoslavia
9. La Patronne, Café Maritime, Anvers
10. The Window, Antwerp
11. Seated Woman
12. Making a Dress
13. The Kneeling Penitent, Seville
14. The Fighting Bull
15. Tired Girl
16. Girl Paddling
17. Nude on Divan (tempera painting)
18. Peasant Women, Makarska, Yugoslavia
19. Ruth
20. Clown
21. A Model
22. Burchtgracht, Antwerp
23. Littlehampton Harbour
24. Judith Dressing (tempera painting)
25. The Clown - Percy Huxter
26. Pinocchio (the Clown) in the Dressing Room
27. A Seat, Antwerp
28. Sleeping
29. Girl Undressing
30. Honfleur
31. Le Vieux Bassin, Honfleur
32. Paignton Beach
33. Nude
34. Morning
35. Dummy on Display
36. Venice
37. West Pier, Brighton
38. Makarska
39. The Roundabout
40. A Street, Brixham
41. Street near the Harbour, Antwerp
42. Fairground
43. Antwerp Cafés
44. The Beach
45. Coco, Sloan and Austin (the clowns)
46. Place de l'Odeon, Paris
47. Promenade, Moulin Rouge
48. Soho Café
49. A Room in the King's Road
50. The Rose
51. Nude
Drawings
52. Clown with a Crooked Nose
53. Ruth
54. Girl Undressing
55. Back Stage, Covent Garden - de Basil Ballet
56. Bullfight 1
57. Bullfight 2
58. Bullfight 3
59. Bullfight 4
60. Bullfight 6
61. Loringa
Picture Details:
The exhibition consisted of 51 paintings and 10 drawings.
Neither sizes or prices were included in the catalogue; but dates were..
Paintings (mostly oils, some tempera)
CLIFFORD HALL
For Clifford Hall, a sense of drawing is never enough as an accomplishment in itself. It is the basic necessity.
The lust to set down the impact of a fresh emotion demands of him the quite instinctive use of the most fluent means at hand: tempera-pastel-oil paint-the incised bite of conté chalk.
Never does his original impulse become blistered over with evanescent flashes of "paint quality", an indiscriminate wallow in shapeless texture, all too readily accepted by painters and public as an emotional symptom.
Yet few contemporaries could question his deep understanding of the richness of that medium. Paint for the sake of pigment or line for the sake of arabesque never emerge in his pictures. This is because colour is always an integral part of shape and these qualities sensuously carry each other to strangely higher powers of themselves.
He will not acknowledge that "Art" is inspiration.
With Clifford Hall, an idea grows in intensity or violence the more it is drawn and redrawn; but always with unfailing instinct for the ultimate impact of shape and colour.
Not, images of desire, as some poets insist but instead a desire for images of ever-increasing sharpness and surprise. Images which move not in air-conditioned intellectual nightmares or in soporific nostalgia, but rather in the infinitely subtle moods between stark sensuality - and tenderness.
His maturity is such that reality for its own sake is not an ideal, nor yet is some specious abstraction.
Whatever his subject, it is its unlikeness to dully accepted fact which first moves him and then through his immense vitality moves the beholder also.
NIGEL LAMBOURNE
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