‘OVERLOOKED’ NO MORE
Glenbow dedicates exhibit to a collection of Sybil Andrews linocuts, paintings and more
Sybil Andrews was 25 when she wrote a manifesto.
While creating manifestos may have been a little more common in 1924 than it is today, it still seems a bold move for a woman in her mid20s who had yet to make any significant dent in the male-dominated art world. It was a few years before she would attend the Grosvenor School of Modern Art and a few years before she was introduced to the then relatively new process of linocutting.
“It was a medium that was sort of waiting for Andrews,” says Hana Leaper, a lecturer at Liverpool School of Art and Design and curator of the Glenbow Museum’s new exhibit Sybil Andrews: Art and Life. “She had written this manifesto in 1924, The Aims of the Art of Today. She had written that if today is an ugly age, an industrial age, then we really need an art that can reflect that. We don’t need more historical pictures, we don’t need more pretty pictures. What we need is an art that can show the everyday life of today. She really found that with the linocut, she really hit her stride.”
Leaper says Andrews is undoubtedly one of the “greatest practitioners” of linocutting, a printmaking technique not unlike woodcutting that involves etching designs into plates of linoleum. Andrews’ vibrant linocuts dominate the exhibit, showcasing the artist’s interest in celebrating workers and the choreography of labour.
“It’s a little bit punk, there’s a bit of a DIY ethos behind it,” says Leaper, author of 2015’s Sybil Andrews Linocuts: A Complete Catalogue. “The way that colour is applied, Andrews is just a master of. She has only three or four colours to work with and she combines in ways that create vibrant colours and effects of light and shade. So the prints are full of life and movement.”
Still, thanks to the expansive collection the Glenbow now owns — the artist gifted more than 500 of her artworks to the museum the year before her 1992 death at age 94 — Sybil Andrews: Art and Life presents a thorough look at her complete body of work.
“You can see that she is a really great etcher and she has a great facility for watercolour,” Leaper says. “She’s not bad with oil. It’s interesting to see that full range and depth and see how some of the prints distil into one another, how her practice up to that point informs how she then handles the
linocut and what perspective she comes from.”
More than 100 of Andrews’ pieces will be on display until Jan. 12, organized and framed in a way that Leaper hopes would meet the artist’s exacting standards. It’s a rare and comprehensive tribute to an artist Leaper feels is woefully underappreciated.
Born in Suffolk County, England, in 1898, Andrews’ fierce work ethic may have partly sprung from her activities during the First and Second World wars. As a welder, she helped construct airplanes during the first war and warships for the British admiralty in the second. In between, she attended the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, where she would learn the art of linocutting from pioneer Claude Flight, who taught from the mid-1920s until 1930. After the war, Andrews and her husband relocated to an isolated spot in Campbell River, B.C. More than two decades later, her art was rediscovered and she worked as a teacher. In the early 1980s, she began her relationship with the Glenbow after an exhibition of her linocuts was displayed. She eventually bestowed not only 500 pieces of art, but also writings, photographs, sketchbooks and other materials.
While Andrews was said to be greatly influenced by cubism and vorticism and perhaps Russian constructivism, Leaper says she doubts the artist really saw herself as part of any specific movement.
“She was a community maker,” says Leaper, who discovered Andrews’ work when visiting relatives in 2011 on Quadra Island in B.C. “When she came to Campbell River, she taught art, she taught music. They had film screenings at their cottage. But that was isolated from the artistic community. I think she might have seen a lot of art movements as pretentious, as putting the cart before the horse. She would often write to her students that they must not seek fame and fortune and that the art must come first. You must have something to say. What’s the point of making a pretty picture? You must have something you want to convey seriously.”
The Glenbow exhibit showcases a number of Andrews’ interests beyond the toil of workers. She was fascinated with architecture, she created watercolours of her medieval cottages in England, a self-portrait in oil and a number of linocuts depicting Christ on the cross, a reflection of her Christian Science beliefs. There are posters she designed for the London Underground and pictures of murals she painted on her cottage walls in England. There are even handstitched leather cases for her collection of recorders. Yes, on top of everything else, she was a virtuoso recorder player.
In Canada, Andrews also dedicated linocuts to the labour of men, often depicting logging trucks. Initially, the dense forests of Vancouver Island left her overwhelmed, which is reflected in her output from the period, as is her fascination with First Nations culture. Her work became even more abstract, says Leaper.
While Glenbow has exhibited its collection of Andrews’ work in the past, Leaper says the show will likely be an introduction to the artist for many.
“For a lot of people, it will be ‘Wow, how did we not know about this artist?’ Leaper says. “The quality of the work is so resoundingly fine. There’s no question that she has been overlooked and she does deserve a real place in the canon.”