La Dell, Edwin: Lithograph – Band in the City
£450.00
For the Coronation of Elizabeth II, a group of artists were invited to create lithographs for the Royal College of Art, they included Edward Bawden, Bernard Cheese, Alistair Grant, Barbara Jones, Kenneth Rowntree and Julian Trevelyan. Edwin La Dell contributed this print and Horseguards Parade which we also have available.
Following the success of the Schools Prints series and Contemporary Lithographs, these prints were sold in limited editions and helped boost the RCA’s skills at reviving lithographic techniques. They were exhibited at the Redfern Gallery from April – May, 1953.
Unframed copies are also available at £350
Artist: Edwin La Dell, (1914-1970)
Title and date: Band in the City/Welsh Guards, 1953
Image size: 44 x 32.0 cms.
Description
Artist description:
Edwin La Dell was one of the most influential printmakers of the post-war period. He progressed from his job in a Rotherham steelworks to Sheffield School of Art and in 1935, to a scholarship at the Royal College of Art. This was a time of idealism and internationalism, and prints appealed to him as an affordable form of art in a time of austerity.
After returning from the Continent as a war artist, he visited the Paris print studios and introduced to the RCA the studio approach to lithography. As a teacher then as Head of Printmaking from 1955-1970, he enthused generations of students in the possibilities of original prints. He was also successful in being commissioned as a printmaker, producing lithographs for Lyons, Guinness and the ‘Pictures for Schools’ series.
Edwin was a prolific painter in oils and watercolours, and took up etching when his health failed in the late 1960s. However, he found the greatest expression in lithography, where the combination of drawing; blocks of colour and visualising the build-up of colours layer by layer gave him the freedom to capture the spirit of his subjects.
Exploring landscapes was his favourite theme, whether town or country, including individual prints, the Oxford, Cambridge, public schools and finally the New York series, completed before his untimely death in 1970. The New York prints were the basis of a Royal Academy exhibition in 2004, his work is held in many collections including the Tate Gallery, the V&A and the Government Art Collection.