In late 1944, while Britain was still at war and paper rationing was in force, Lund Humphries published a large-format, luxuriously produced, beautifully designed monograph on Henry Moore’s sculpture and drawings. In a review a few months later in theBurlington Magazine, Nikolaus Pevsner described it as ‘more ambitious and more complete than any brought out in England for a very long time on the work of one individual sculptor’ and ‘a great achievement of British publishing after five years of shortages and controls’. Patrick Heron in an interview many years later described it as the book which ‘created Henry Moore’.
Valerie Holman rounds off a year of Lund Humphries anniversary celebrations with a selection of the company’s highlights and successes of the past 75 years. To celebrate 75 years of art publishing, every month this year a Lund Humphries author has focused on a single ‘landmark’ publication from the firm’s long list, bringing to light the stories behind […]
Back in the 1940s, when Britain still had an Empire and Peter Gregory was developing a fledgling art-publishing list at Lund Humphries, contemporary British art was relatively straightforward to define, even if Britishness and avant-garde art sometimes seemed awkward bedfellows. At the Lund Humphries 75th anniversary talk at the ICA on 26th November 2014, the […]
Benedict Read discusses the two books written by his father Herbert Read on the artist Ben Nicholson in 1948 and 1956 and the wider impact of Lund Humphries’ monographs in this period. The Lund Humphries monographs started with Henry Moore in 1944. This set a format of listing works, plentiful illustrations, an artist’s own writings […]
Former Head of Collections and Exhibitions at The Henry Moore Foundation, David Mitchinson, describes the importance of the comprehensive book on Henry Moore’s work which was published by Lund Humphries in 1944. The triumvirate of sculptor Henry Moore, art historian Herbert Read and printer/publisher Peter Gregory was one based on friendship, Yorkshire, and mutual respect. Read had […]
Antony Penrose explains the fascinating story behind the book which revealed the realities of London’s Blitz to the American public. By the time the full ferocity of the Blitz began on September 7 1940 Lee Miller, formerly a fashion model turned Surrealist photographer in Paris and collaborator of Man Ray, had been working freelance for Vogue for […]
Tomorrow sees the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) publish a new book documenting its fascinating early history. Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1946-1968, written by art historian Anne Massey and with a foreword by ICA Executive Director Gregor Muir, is the first in-depth examination of the extraordinary period of artistic activity which followed the Institute’s foundation. The early ICA […]
In May 1939, nearly 75 years ago, the celebrated American architect Frank Lloyd Wright visited London and gave four lectures at the RIBA. The meetings were hailed at the time as ‘perhaps the most remarkable events of recent architectural affairs in England. No architectural speaker in London has ever in living memory gathered such audiences.’ With great […]