Largest Presentation of Winifred Nicholson's Work in Nearly 30 Years at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

Showing in the autumn, Liberation of Colour draws on new research, including archival material never previously seen, and features her late 'prismatic' pictures, which have never been properly examined. Liberation of Colour is organised with Nicholson's grandson Jovan Nicholson, curator of the recent exhibition 'Art and Life: Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, William Staite Murray, 1920-1931'.

The exhibition focuses on Nicholson's treatment of light and colour, taking stimulus from the various places in which she lived or visited throughout her adult life, including her native Cumbria.

It begins by exploring her time in Lugano, Switzerland, in the 1920s, before continuing to France in the 1930s, where she took inspiration from friends Piet Mondrian and Naum Gabo to delve into abstraction. It then goes on to document a trip to the Hebrides in the 1950s and continues in Greece, to which she made regular trips during the 1960s. It concludes with her output in Cumbria, where she lived for most of her life.

Featuring 67 paintings, the exhibition covers various genres and styles - landscape, still life and portrait - and includes famous pieces such as TheGate to the Isles(Blue Gate) (1980) alongside pieces never exhibited before such as Outward and Inward (1936).

Nicholson is known for depicting many different flowers. She once said: "My paintings talk in colour and any of the shapes are there to express colour but not outline. The flowers are sparks of light, built of and thrown out into the air as rainbows are thrown, in an arc."

Towards the end of her life, Nicholson used prisms in her work, looking through them to see how light was broken up and changed, and these ideas enthused her practice. Many of them unseen, and a key feature of the show, Nicholson's prismatic pictures were a culmination of her search to find "form's secret and rhythmic law."

Liberation of Colour opens to the public on Saturday 22 October before continuing to Art Gallery in Nottingham from 4 March - 4 June 2017 and Falmouth Art Gallery from 24 June - 16 September 2017.

Contact: Sarah Smith, +44(0)1642-384263, [email protected]