Nicholson’s earliest paintings were still lifes influenced by those of his father. In the 1920s he began painting figurative and abstract works inspired by Post Impressionism and Cubism. He produced his first geometric and abstract reliefs in 1933. He first exhibited in 1919, at the Grosvenor Gallery and Grafton Galleries. His first one-man show was held at the Twenty-one Gallery.
In 1952 Nicholson won first prize at the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh. He was awarded the first Guggenheim International painting prize in 1956, and the international prize for painting at the Sao Paulo Bienal in 1957. Numerous retrospective exhibitions of his work have been held, including shows at the Venice Biennale and Tate Gallery in 1954-5, Kunsthalle and Tate Gallery in 1993-4.
Helped by wide international exposure in British Council tours during the 1940s and 1950s and by the championing of the writer Herbert Read, Nicholson’s work came to be seen, with Henry Moore’s, as the quintessence of British modernism.
Nicholson made his first entirely abstract work, 1924 (first abstract painting, Chelsea), in his Chelsea studio, where he often stayed, while his wife, painter Winifred Nicholson, preferred to work in their farmhouse, Bankshead, in Cumberland.
Spots and stripes and their reflections continued to play a part in Ben’s work throughout the 1930s after he met and fell in love with Barbara Hepworth in 1931. Ben and Barbara went to Dieppe, a favourite haunt for artists in August 1932. A shoe shop called ‘Au Chat Botté’ (Puss in Boots), on the Grande rue caught Ben’s eye. He told Winifred that he painted for three days without stopping when he got back to London. The result was 1932 (Au Chat Botté).
The ‘roughness’ and the use of plaster on plywood was another step towards his reliefs of the following year. The stripy bar echoes the stripy French pencils both Ben and Barbara liked very much: they reminded Barbara of barbers’ poles. Ben holds one in the photograph of his hands taken for the Unit One catalogue in 1934.
Here Nicholson floats circles, triangles and other shapes on a dark and milk chocolate coloured background. He creates a sense of rhythm and movement through the use of contrasting blue and red dots and straight and arcing scored white lines. These lines were produced by scratching through paint to reveal a white layer beneath. For Nicholson, this technique emphasised the painting’s materials and its status as an object in its own right. In 1934, he described his process as a way of creating ‘a living thing as nice as a poodle with two shining black eyes.’