The Collection David Bomberg

David Bomberg was born in Birmingham in 1890, the fifth child in a Polish-Jewish immigrant family, but grew up in Whitechapel in the East End of London. He initially trained as a lithographer and studied art in evening classes, but a grant from the Jewish Education Art Society enabled him to study at the Slade School of Art from 1911-13. During this time, he painted a series of complex geometric works – most famously Mud Bath and In the Hold – combining the influence of Cubism and Futurism. (The Futurists were fascinated by the dynamism of modern forms of machinery, transport and communication. One of their main interests was capturing a sense of movement in their works.) However, during World War l, Bomberg served on the Western front. His experience of the destructive power of machines at war and the death of his brother in the trenches destroyed his faith in the machine age. After the war, his painting became rounded and more representational. He spent four years in Palestine concentrating on landscape painting and later lived in Spain, developing a more vigorous style with looser brushwork. He was an official war artist during the Second World War. After the war, he and his wife, artist Lilian Holt, founded the Borough Group (1948). He taught at the Borough Polytechnic, where his students included Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. In 1954, he settled in Spain.