Ben Nicholson

British, 1894-1982. While Ben Nicholson started his career painting traditional still lifes, he became the driving force behind the British Abstract movement. Nicholson's travels to Paris introduced him to Cubism and set him on his path which eventually lead to Constructivism. During World War II, he and then wife Barbara Hepworth, escaped to St. Ives where they established an abstract artists group that rose to international acclaim. Nicholson worked with painting, sculpture and mixed media to explore abstraction and the relationship of line and negative space.