Lot 54: Jack Bilbo (1907-1967)

The Medium
signed with initials 'J.B.' (lower right), signed again, inscribed and dated 'JACK BILBO/"THE MEDIUM"/LONDON, 1939' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
36 1/2 x 20 in. (92.7 x 50.8 cm.)

with Modern Art Gallery, London.

Jack Bilbo was born in Berlin and was a member of the German-Jewish Baruch family. In 1940, he decided to open a gallery (The Modern Art Gallery) 'to give the modern artist a free and unbiased platform' and create 'for the people an oasis of sanity and construction in a world of false values, believing in the necessity for an intellectual fight against Hitlerism and all it stands for' (see M. Remy, Surrealism in Britain, Hants, p.216). At the gallery, Bilbo represented Emmy Bridgwater's first one-woman exhibition and although there was no one British Surrealism centre in London he provided a platform for Bridgwater and a meeting place and venue for artists.
Bilbo's own work is synonymous with wild energy and electrifying violent colour. The present work is very interesting, in the sense that it brings together his obsessive and main motifs of scenes with images of ghouls or ghosts and his equal preoccupation for sado-masochistic scenes and arcane rituals.

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