David Bomberg

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In the Hold, circa 1913–1914, Tate Gallery.

David Bomberg (December 5, 1890 – August 19, 1957) was a painter, born in Birmingham, England.

Bomberg grew up in Whitechapel, in the East End of London. After studying art at City and Guilds, Bomberg was at first apprenticed to a chromolithographer, training as a lithographer, but quit to concentrate on preparing for entry to the Slade after only a year. Simultaneously Bomberg took night classes at the central Westminster School of Art (where he was taught by Walter Sickert), and later at the Slade School of Art.

He travelled to France where he met Modigliani and Picasso.

The Mud Bath, 1914, Tate Gallery.

Bomberg's first well known works date from the 1910s. They are rather complex geometric compositions built over relatively traditional subjects, and typically use a limited number of striking colours. Humans are turned into simple, angular shapes, and a simple grid-work colouring scheme sometimes overlays the whole painting. In The Hold and The Mud Bath can be said to be typical of this period.

At this time, Bomberg was associated with Vorticism, though he never allowed himself to be a full member of the movement, despite Wyndham Lewis' efforts, not allowing his work to be reproduced in BLAST, the Vorticists' journal, for example.

Later, Bomberg's works became more representational, and from the late 1920s his style became more expressionist. He painted a number of portraits and landscapes of the places he travelled to in the Middle East and Europe.

Bomberg also worked as a teacher at the Borough Polytechnic (now London South Bank University in London from 1945 to 1953, where he taught Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff, among others. One of the student halls of residences, David Bomberg House, is named after him.

Bomberg died in London in 1957, his critical stock rising sharply thereafter.

Tregor and Tregoff, Cornwall, 1947, Tate Gallery.

A major retrospective of Bomberg's work was held at the Tate Gallery, London, in 1988.

In 2006, Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal (Cumbria) mounted the first major exhibition of Bomberg's paintings for nearly twenty years: David Bomberg: Spirit in the Mass (17 July – 28 October 2006).