ART
AT the Anglo-French Art Centre are pictures by Fred Klein, a Dutchman who has gravitated to Paris. He sees the world through fauve-coloured spectacles, delighting in horses and colour. In most of his pictures these loves combine to produce pink, blue, yellow, red and green horses which cavort and caper decoratively in an imaginative void of paint. Personally, however, I prefer his paintings of bathers, shimmering from the water, each isolated in a Turner-like haze as though but figments of their own imaginations ; these convey, with fluent, fluid brushwork, a charming innocence and wonder.
Elsewhere, although the Leicester Galleries have yet, at the time of writing, to reopen, the spate of mixed summer shows is upon us— a recurrent headache for the well-meaning critic with little space at his disposal. He can but single out an arbitrary handful of names and hope to be forgiven by an understanding majority. At the same time these shows fulfil a most important function, providing as they do the first opportunity, in most cases, for the more thoughtful and adventurous of the rising generation to try their wings in competition with their elders (I will not say betters), and the more thoughtful and adventurous of the public to have a gentle gamble with
t em-
selves and spot a future winner. The exhibition at Messrs. Roland, Browse and Delbanco's, not very happily entitled " Currents of Post- Impressionism in France and England," plays fairly safe and is nearly as distinctive as one has come to expect of this gallery. Note here the Sutherland, the William Scott, a Leslie Hurry (No. 42), and, as a novelty, the Douanier Rousseau. The first instalment of the Redfern's monster show is more catholic in its inclusions and con- sequently more uneven, though not less valuable. Note here the work by Ceri Richards, Michael Ayrton, Robert McBryde and the
big, impressive Francis Bacon. At the Arcade Gallery the lesser- known names stand or fall by themselves, disdaining props supplied by the famous. As a matter of fact they do both, but note here, amongst the work that stands, that of Ursula McCannell.
M. H. Mlnoterou.
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