Red and Silver 1955 Oil and pencil on canvas. 760 x 685 mm Literature: Norbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, London, 1993, pl.281, p.296.		BEN NICHOLSON Denham, Buckinghamshire 1894 ~ 1982 London After the Second World War, Nicholson's reputation was rapidly reaching international proportions. He was commissioned to paint a mural for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and won the first prize at the Carnegie International in 1952, the First Guggenheim International Prize in 1956 and in 1957 the International Prize for Painting at the São Paulo Bienal. He had a retrospective exhibition in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1954 and major retrospectives at the Tate Gallery in 1955 and 1968. Also in 1968 he was awarded the Order of Merit.1 Our drawing is comparable to a series of works done in the 1950s. It is characterised by his renewed exploration of Cubism. At this period Nicholson combined his elegant, linear still-life subjects of the 1940s with a vertical plane representing a table top set against a background defined by another colour. Hardly any line is quite vertical or horizontal. His overlapping, seemingly flat, pencilled shapes, are enhanced by two small areas of strong red colour in oil. The red plays with our eye and introduces the idea that the surface is not entirely two dimensional. It suggests a subtle sense of depth and adds substance to the surface of the table and the objects on it. 1. Ed. Susan Compton, British Art in the 20th Century, The Modern Movement, exh. cat., London, 1987, p. 442.