Austin Osman Spare was born in Snow Hill, near Smithfield Market, London on December 31 1888, the son of Philip Newton Spare, a City of London policeman. Leaving his elementary school at age 13, he took his higher education into his own hands, working not only at art but at general subjects, in particular the occult. He had some formal tuition at the Lambeth School of Art and the Royal College of Art. He was already exhibiting at the Royal Academy at the age of 16 but in later years ceased to send anything there. In July 1914 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Bailie Gallery, showing a number of his so-called "psychic" drawings and some very powerful generalizations of animal nature. Just after the 1914 - 1918 War Spare became friendly with John Austen and Alan Odle, figure draugthsman differing considerable from him and from each other, but each having certain aims in common with his. From October 1922 to July 1924 Spare edited, jointly with Clifford Bax, a sumptuously produced quarterly called the Golden Hind for Chapman and Hall. It collapsed for lack of support, but during its brief career it reproduced in large scale some really superb figure drawing and lithographs by Spare and others. In 1925 Spare, Odle, Austen and Harry Clarke showed together at the St. George's Gallery, and in 1930 at the Godfrey Philips Galleries. Thereafter Spare was rarely found in the purlieus of Bond St.. He would teach a little from January to June, then up to the end of October, would finish various works, and from the beginning of November to Christmas would hand his product in the living-room, bedroom and kitchen of his flat in the Borough. There he kept open house; critics and purchasers would go down, ring the bell, be admitted, and inspect the pictures, often in the company of some of the models - working women of the neighborhood. Spare was convinced that there was a great potential demand for pictures at 2 or 3 guineas each, and condemned the practice of asking L20 for "amateurish stuff". He worked chiefly in pastel or pencil, drawing rapidly, often taking no more than two hours over a picture. He was especially interested in delineating the old, and had various models over 70 and one as old as 93. During the last war, while on fire watching duty, he was blown up and temporarily lost the use of both arms. His memory was also affected, but in 1946 in a cramped basement in Brixton, he began to make pictures again, starting, as he said, from scratch. In 1947 an exhibition of no les than 163 of the pictures he had painted in the previous few months attracted many people to the Archer gallery, in Westbourne Grove. He deliberately rejected social fame and positive position in fashionable society of the time (1920's), in order to remain pure, to remain true to his ideals, to continue his unadulterated methods and lifestyle through the use of his Alphabet of Desire. |
|
|