BANTING, JOHN(1902 – 1971)
Paintings by the artist available for purchase
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Biographical Details |
The son
of a commercial bookbinder and a teacher, John Banting was born in Chelsea,
London on 12 May 1902. He made drawings and poems under the influence of Vorticism
at the age of eighteen. While working as a clerk, he attended life classes at
Vincent Square art school under Bernard Meninsky (1921) and the free academies
in Paris, including the Grande Chaumi-24re and Colarossi's (1922). By 1925 he
had established a studio in Fitzroy Street and was associated with the
Bloomsbury group; he made designs for Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth
Press and for the ballets Pomona (1929) and Prometheus (1936)
at Sadler's Wells. He was notable for shaving his head (a response to premature
hair-loss), and for his relationships with Nancy Cunard and the poet Brian
Howard. In
Paris in 1930, Banting was drawn to Surrealism, the results of which emerged in
his exhibition at the Wertheim Gallery the following year. He shared Cunard's
outrage at racial prejudice, stayed with her in Harlem, New York in 1932 and
contributed to her Negro anthology (1935). In London, Banting painted
and produced commercial and decorative designs; he also wrote and illustrated
his satirical A Blue Book of Conversation (published in 1946). He
contributed to the International Exhibition of Surrealism in 1936, and
represented an avowedly Stalinist position within the Trotskyist Surrealist
movement. He accompanied Cunard on a three month visit to Spain during the
Civil War (Oct. - Dec. 1937) and in Madrid attempted to join the International
Brigade, then in the process of disbanding. After contributing to the Exposition
Internationale du Surr-23alisme (Paris, Feb. 1938) through Marcel
Duchamp's invitation, Banting had a solo exhibition at the Storran Gallery
(London, Oct.). At the beginning of the war he was declared unfit for active
service, but worked as an art director for the Ministry of Information's Strand
Films with Dylan Thomas and Curtis Moffat. Less officially, he also served as
art editor for the leftist monthly Our Time (1941) and co-edited the
anthology Salvo for Russia with Cunard (London 1942). After a period
in Ireland (1947), Banting was saved from extreme poverty by a grant from the
Artists Benevolent Fund secured by Julian Trevelyan. In the 1950s he lived in
Rye, Sussex also the home of his friend Edward Burra, subsequently moving to
Hastings (1965). Although he produced few paintings in his last years and
devoted considerable time to writing, Banting regularly contributed earlier
works to Surrealist exhibitions. He died at Hastings on 30 January 1972 between
solo exhibitions in London at the Hamet Gallery (Dec. 1971) and Edward Harvane
Gallery (March-April 1972). Bibliography: |
