7

Edgar Hubert, 1906-1985
Composition, February, 1944
oil on paper, 28 x 22 ins, 71.1 x 55.9 cm
The Fine Art Society, Edgar Hubert 1906 - 1985, 15 March - 16 April 2005, no. 10
Edgar Hubert was a reclusive artist who produced some of Britain’s most radical abstract paintings of the 1930s. Born in 1906 in West Sussex, he studied at the Slade School of Art becoming a leading figure in the Objective Abstraction movement. While his contemporaries returned to figuration, Hubert remained committed to abstraction, developing a distinctive style that combined geometric and organic forms. He exhibited widely in the 1930s and 1940s, including two solo exhibitions at the Mayor Gallery, ICA, and in Paris with the British Council, but his chronic shyness and the loss of close friends led him to withdraw from the art world. Living reclusively on the Sussex coast, he continued painting in isolation until his death in 1985.