Brian Bradshaw
Long Moor, Yorkshire
About the SessionSpanning 4 centuries of global art history, The International Sale, presents 127 exceptional lots by artists from 27 countries across five continents. The auction highlights masterworks ranging from 17th century European paintings to post-2000 editions by contemporary artist's such as Mr Brainwash (lot 51), Jim Dine (lots 83-86), Isaac Julien (lot 108), Jeff Koons (45), and Lucas Samaras (lot 107 and 110). The sale is anchored by important pieces from Georg Baselitz, Erik Laubscher, Shirin Neshat, and a newly repatriated 1935 portrait by Irma Stern.
The auction's diversity is driven by rare museum-quality highlights, led by Irma Stern's Two Women (lot 31), which returns to South Africa after decades in a Berlin private collection. It is joined by Erik Laubscher's rare recto-verso painting Young Family / Construction (lot 48), an Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat photographic portrait linked to her award-winning Turbulent installation (lot 66), and a uniquely hand-coloured linocut by German master Georg Baselitz titled Das Pferd, Im Wald und auf der Heide Series (The Horse, in the Forest and on the Heath Series) (lot 72).
LOT 23
Brian Bradshaw
Long Moor, Yorkshire
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
About this Item
signed and dated '86; signed and inscribed ‘Long Moor’ on the reverse
Provenance
The Brian Bradshaw collection, and thence by descent.
Notes
Born in Bolton, Lancashire, Brian Bradshaw trained at the Bolton and Manchester Schools of Art before proceeding to the Royal College of Art. In 1960 he was invited to South Africa to take the position of Chair of Fine Arts at Rhodes University in Makanda.
It was the Eastern Cape landscape that fundamentally transformed Bradshaw's artistic language, drawing him away from the realism of his English years toward a charged interplay between abstraction and the raw physicality of his adopted terrain. In 1964 Bradshaw founded the Grahamstown Group, exhibiting throughout South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Bradshaw's use of thick impasto and aggressive forms carried the dignified atmosphere of a sun-drenched landscape, opulent with vibrating colour. Bradshaw's continued influence can be seen in the work of his former students Penny Siopis (1953-), Christopher Till (1951-), and Neil Rodger (1941-2013).
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