Racehorses , 1913
41.5 x 66.2 cm (h x w)
Black chalk and wash on paper

© David Bomberg estate

This radical chalk-and-wash drawing was among Bomberg's five exhibits in the ‘Jewish Section’ that he co-curated with Jacob Epstein at the Whitechapel Art Gallery’s exhibition Twentieth Century Art: A Review of Modern Movements. Bomberg's friend John Rodker (a racing enthusiast) also reproduced it as a frontispiece in The Dial Monthly, explaining that it was set in a paddock at a race meeting, that the two figures on the front right of the composition were bookies, those to their left spectators, and that the style was ‘cubist’; adding ‘It is not intended to be comic’. Executed in 1913, when Bomberg was only 22, Racehorses is a key transitional work, which demonstrates his absorption and understanding of the contemporaneous European avant-garde, skilfully reworked into a drawing of startling power and originality.

Exhibited by:

Ben Uri Research Unit

Other works by David Bomberg (1890-1957)

The Broken Aqueduct, Wadi Kelt near Jericho , 1926
50.5 x 40.5 cm (h x w)
Oil on canvas
Ben Uri Research Unit
English Woman , 1920
59.5 x 49.5 cm (h x w)
Oil on canvas on board
Ben Uri Research Unit
At the Window , 1919
74.8 x 49 cm (h x w)
Oil on canvas
Ben Uri Research Unit
Ronda, Spain , 1954-56
45.5 x 61 cm (h x w)
Charcoal on paper
Ben Uri Research Unit
Mount Zion and the Church of the Dormition, Jerusalem , 1923
60 x 49 cm (h x w)
Oil on canvas
Ben Uri Research Unit

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