Artist

Banting, John

Title

Untitled

Technique

linocut

Date

1931

Dimensions

22.5cm height x 27cm width

Type

print

Accession Number

1992.3

Owner

City of Burnaby

Collection

Permanent Collection

A Surrealist painter, designer and stage designer, John Banting was born in London, UK, in 1902. In his youth, Banting made drawings and poems under the influence of Vorticism, a British avant-garde group wih the aim of creating art that expressed the dynamism of the modern world. Later, while working as a clerk, he attended life classes at Vincent Square art school under Bernard Meninsky (1921) and then at the free academies in Paris, including the Grande Chaumière and Colarossi's (1922). By 1925, Banting had established a studio in Fitzroy Street in London and was associated with the Bloomsbury group; he made designs for Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press and for the ballets Pomona (1929) and Prometheus (1936) at Sadler's Wells. While in Paris in 1930, Banting began to absorb the influence of Surrealism after meeting artists like Duchamp, Breton, Giacometti and Crevel. He contributed regularly to the International Surrealist Exhibitions in London, Paris and New York from 1936 onwards. He died in Hastings, England, in 1972.