Austin Osman Spare’s School of Draughtsmanship

Hardback Standard Edition
500 copies. 336 pages, 156x234mm. Litho on Munken, sewn, illustrated endpapers, tailbands, cloth bound, dustjacket. 44 colour plates and 277 black & white images in the text. Hand-numbered.

Featuring Fragmentum, written by AOS, here are the principles underlying his art.

Detailed notes transcribed by Frank Letchford from his advanced lessons in portraiture, this is an indispensable resource for anyone wishing to gain an intimate understanding of Spare’s work practice. Letchford studied the myriad principles underlying Spare’s rich and varied art production. Spare’s preferred materials and theories on how best to produce drawings by exploiting photography are complemented by art-historical wisdom.

Spare’s devotion to geometry is revealed by William Wallace in relation to Dürer, the Occult, and to Spare’s monogram, early drawings, and late aphorisms. Richly illustrated throughout with as yet unseen works and abundantly annotated with endnotes and Appendix.

Featuring

– Unprecedented ingress into Spare’s method, principles of teaching, and pearls of wisdom on art history.

– Unpublished artworks and preparatory sketches, including a lavish set of large-scale instructions detailing Spare’s notion of evolutionary figuration.

– Instructional sketches on the construction of the human head and body and the means for their creative distortion.

– Letchford’s copious Tuition Notes (anatomy for portraiture, life-study, materials, framing, and more). Advice on pastels and watercolour, and how to construct a landscape composition.

– A detailed catalogue of the categories of the artist’s work from Cockney Portraits to Automatic drawings.

– Timeline and preparatory notes for the 1952 Tavern Exhibition.

– An insightful Introduction by Michael Staley.

– Historical analysis by Dr Wallace puts into context Spare’s early education which fed the principles he later deployed when teaching his students.

– Afterword by Stephen Pochin examining the life-long appropriation of photographic sources by Spare; with some surprising examples