Boris Anrep: A Modern Master

by Gregory Edwards

Overview

Raised in Tzarist pre-revolutionary Russia Boris Anrep became an important British artist in the first half of the twentieth century, yet until now has never had a full overview of his considerable artistic output. A member of the Bloomsbury and Garsington sets of Edwardian England, he counted the writer Virginia Woolf, the economist John Maynard Keynes, and the painter Augustus John among his many friends. Discover Anrep’s fascinating story and learn about the many mosaics he created, some of them in the most important institutions in Britain.
He trained for fine arts but chose instead to create superb mosaics; thousands walk over his art every week in Tate Britain and the National Gallery. There are immense mosaics by him in Westminster Cathedral and the Bank of England, and his work is considered of sufficient importance to be in the collections of the V&A in London and the MAG in Birmingham. This book is the first complete appraisal of Boris Anrep’s oeuvre, and attempts to shine a light on his considerable output as a mosaic artist. It also looks at his great work in bringing modernity and a contemporary sensibility to mosaics in Britain. He is also important for shifting the position of the artist away from simply designing the mosaics to being right at the heart of their entire creation.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940153115795
Publisher:	Gregory Edwards
Publication date:	07/04/2016
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	278 KB

About the Author

I love to write poetry in my spare time, which generally consists of sitting on trains going in and out of central London. In addition to writing poetry, my work is concerned with art and the urban environment. I call this theme ‘The Decorated City’, and I am dedicated to increasing awareness of how important it is for urban dwellers to have a beautiful and inspiring environment, and not simply empty walls of concrete and brick. My first printed book ‘Hidden Cities,’ (1991) was a book about history, art and design in architectural details, and was published by Vancouver Canada publisher Talonbooks. I researched and wrote the text, designed the book, and shot all of the 371 photographs in it. ‘Hidden Cities’ won a City of Vancouver Heritage Award for 1992. It was also a nominee for the Vancouver Book Award. You can still find it on Amazon. In 1994 I moved to London where I have lived, worked and studied for over twenty years. During this time I have exhibited photographs of Art Deco architecture on numerous occasions, and given talks about London’s Art Deco architecture. From 2006-2012 I also had a website called ‘London Deco’. In September 2014 I published the first volume of a series of ebooks: ‘London Deco: Offices’. This was the first publication dedicated to exclusively examine the city’s considerable number of Art Deco office buildings, most of them in central London. This ebook has over three hundred photographs in it, and includes sections devoted to buildings that no longer exist, and also on contemporary ones which reference Art Deco. This was only available from Apple, but has now been translated to Smashwords, albeit in two volumes due to the high number of photos in it. This was followed by ‘London Deco: Residences – Part 1 Suburbia’ and some time later with ‘London Deco: Residences – Part 2 Central London’. These two ebooks effectively divide the tremendous number of Art Deco apartments – ‘blocks of flats’ to Londoners – into outer and inner segments which in turn each revolved West - North - East - South. With these two volumes a broad survey is presented, showing the many forms of Art Deco flats constructed in the Greater London area, mainly in the 1930s, but sometimes later. Both feature hundreds of photographs, many in single album frames. At this point only available from Apple. Another work, ‘London Deco: Introduction’ is available as a free download. All of these books can be located by searching for ‘gregory edwards london deco’. This is available from Apple too, but also from Smashwords for non-Apple users. Art and poetry activities have so far resulted in ‘Stay Up Late’ which is a collection of science-fiction and fantasy poems available from Smashwords and Apple. I have recently published a new work, an illustrated collection of poems called: ‘Rotten Rhymes’. This is intended to be fun, light reading with the occasional bite of comment on life.