David Bomberg

David Garshen Bomberg (December 5, 1890 – August 19, 1957) was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys. The most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists that studied under Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Art, Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I; typically using a limited number of striking colours, turnin... more

David Garshen Bomberg (December 5, 1890 – August 19, 1957) was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys. The most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists that studied under Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Art, Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I; typically using a limited number of striking colours, turning humans into simple, angular shapes, and sometimes overlaying the whole painting a strong grid-work colouring scheme. He was expelled from the Slade in 1913, with agreement between the senior teachers Tonks, Frederick Brown and Philip Wilson Steer, because of the audacity of his breach from the conventional approach of that time . His faith in the machine age shaken by the trauma of serving as a private soldier in the trenches on the Western Front, Bomberg moved to a more figurative style in the 1920s and his work became increasingly... less