Post 188 -by Gautam Shah
SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture
Winifred Knights was born in Streatham, South London (1899-1947). She painted very few paintings in her life of 48 years and a career of 25 years. She painted just seven, finished art works. She, however, did leave, was a great number of preparatory works, drawings, studies and trial pictures. She was an artist who was obsessively meticulous. She condensed images from large repertory of studies to form a composition. She had an obscure reputation, but her greatest achievement was her originality.
Knights developed a consistent style, reducing form and colour, a characteristic of Decorative Painting. She rendered her pictures within an architectural setting and with suitable fashion dressed human beings. Landscape was an important element in all her major works. Landscape was formed of low-toned and collection of unrelated elements. The trees were superfluous. He composition was condensed from a number of preparatory drawings.
She had a deep attachment to the countryside and, was influenced by the utopian writings of the socialist philosophers. These resulted in figure compositions with rural labour. Her work reflects her attachment to Biblical scenes, though she was not a religious person.Her works include, not just drawn art, but clothing, lifestyle and interior design.
Winifred Knights’ THE DELUGE, a spectacular masterpiece won her the Prix de Rome in 1920 and the respect of the art world. In an apocalyptic interpretation of the biblical tale of the flood, she has depicted a scene riddled with hysterical panic with sharp angular forms. Figures fleeing to higher ground while Noah’s ark glides away in the distance. Originally Knights had planned something far more conventional and still, but this remarkable work feels entirely of its time. In the foreground, Knights shows herself in a self-portrait, off-center in the foreground, with her limbs and psyche shifting in opposite directions.
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