19 August 2019

By Chris Dodd

Chris Dodd catches up with Cyril Power.

If you are familiar with the story of Bob Janousek’s revival of British rowing in Pieces of Eight, you will recognise Cyril Power’s image of a crew shooting Hammersmith Bridge. Several examples of Power’s linocuts can be seen at Dulwich Picture Gallery’s superb Cutting Edge exhibition until 8 September.

Power was an architect, painter, etcher, colour linocut and monotype artist – a polymath in the art world, and a leading light in the printmaking movement centred on the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in Pimlico, founded by the wood engraver Iain Macnab in 1925 and attracting talented students to a range of classes during its 15 years of existence.

The exhibition includes work by Sybil Andrews, Claude Flight, Lill Tschudi and William Greengrass, among others. Popular subjects were rural life, transport, the wartime London Underground, large assemblies at places such as concert halls and examination rooms and sport. Power and Andrews, who lived within a short walk of the river at Hammersmith, depicted rowing, skating, tennis and other sports, and their linocuts are particularly representative of rhythm and movement that this group display in their work.

A visit to the Cutting Edge will not disappoint.

Cutting Edge at Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Rd, Dulwich, London SE21 7AD, until 8 September.