Description
Jeremiah was known as the “weeping prophet” whose tearful confessions and anguish of soul sometimes called for redress against personal enemies, giving rise to the term ‘jeremiad.’ Jeremiah’s message of Jerusalem’s impending fall made many enemies and few friends. He was often imprisoned. Some traditions hold that he died in Egypt, where he was taken against his protests by the survivors of the siege of Jerusalem. Others suggest that he was removed from Egypt to Babylon after the Babylonian invasion in 583 B.C.
Alistair Grant was a great and justly-revered experimental British printmaker. He worked in the printmaking department of the Royal College for 35 years (1955 -90), acting as Head of Department 1970 -90 and as Professor of Printmaking (Emeritus) 1984 -90. He retired to pursue his love of painting. He also co-authored an important book on the life and works of fellow English artist Henry Moore, whom his abstract figurative style resembles. Mr. Grant died suddenly in 1997.
These prints are from the late 1960s and show the strong influence of figurative abstraction and surrealist elements in Grant’s work. The shapes he uses become a visual vocabulary and are ciphers of existing forms – organized on strongly colored backgrounds which allows them to be read as landscapes. This approach to describing a sense of place finds echoes in the St. Ives artists though Grant’s work have their own unique character.