Drawn from Life: People on Paper

Drawn from Life: People on Paper brings together over 50 masterpieces of drawing from the Arts Council and British Council collections, celebrating images of people captured on paper. The selection spans over a century of British art, from Vorticist master Wyndham Lewis and Eduardo Paolozzi’s animated line drawings inspired by Rembrandt to postwar Henry Moore and Lucian Freud’s somber figure studies. This survey includes numerous works by some of the biggest names of 20th- and 21st-century British art, including Frank Auerbach, Peter Blake, Elizabeth Frink, Antony Gormley, Richard Hamilton, Barbara Hepworth, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, Gwen John, Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer and Euan Uglow, among many others. A foreword by Jill Constantine, Head of the Arts Council Collection, introduces the collection’s holdings in figurative art while an engaging and insightful essay by Martin Herbert explores the multitudinous themes within the works as well as the development of figurative drawing throughout the period. Drawn from Life: People on Paper is a curious and compact volume covering an exciting array of styles from some of the world’s best-known artists.