Colour in the Underground
LEADING female artists and designers such as Dora Batty, Laura Knight and Zandra Rhodes, whose work has featured in London Transport and Transport for London advertisements over the past century, are on display in the London Transport Museum’s ‘Poster Girls’ exhibition (October 13 to summer 2018), on Covent Garden Piazza, WC2.
Ever since Frank Pick began his innovative approach to promoting the London Underground in 1908 by commissioning bright, chancetaking, young and established artists to design posters, advertising for London’s public-transport systems has been widely admired and the museum’s collection of poster art is one of the best in the world.
Among the most prolific of the female artists was Dora Batty, a tutor in textiles at London’s Central School of Art and Design, whose work was characterised by a spare, elegant modernity. Dame Laura Knight, the first woman to be elected to the Royal Academy, favoured landscape scenes, creating striking images of Richmond Park and other enticing countryside locations reachable by Tube. Margaret Calkin James, whose portfolio included designs for the Curwen Press, covered a broad range of subjects, from the delights of Box Hill and Kew to the joys of a show in town or Trooping the Colour. The exhibition also explores the artists’ careers beyond their poster art and their influence on 20th-century design. Jack Watkins