Color linocut on on tissue thin Japanese laid paper, 30,2 x 27 cm. Signed and numbered in pencil. One of 50 copies. Annotated in ink in the lower margin "Discussion", "Claude Flight", "£ 2.2.0" and with marks for attaching the mount. Ref: Coppel CF.32
Claude Flight was the spiritus rector of the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London, which opened its doors in 1925 and produced a generation of artists who are now prominent, such as Cyril Power, Sybil Andrews and Lill Tschudi. Both Claude Flight and his students devoted themselves almost exclusively to the technique of the colour linocut, which they offered in small editions of hand prints, emphasising the individual, even painterly quality of each individual copy, at very favourable conditions. Flight summed up in his book Art and Craft of Lino Cutting and Printing: "The lino-cut is different to the other printing mediums, it has no tradition of technique behind it, so that the student [...] can make his own tradition, and coming at a time like the present when new ideas and ideals are shaping themselves out of apparent chaos, he can do his share in building up a new and more vital art of to-morrow." It is interesting to note that Flight also referred, among other things, to the linocuts on display in British travelling exhibitions of Franz Cižek's youth art class (Vienna School of Applied Arts), in which he saw the potential to transform art and education and thus society. Above all, art should become accessible to broader social strata. But what was supposed to be available to the "average person" at the time for the price of "his daily beer or cinema ticket" (quote Flight) is today one of the most sought-after and highly paid jewels of interwar printmaking.
