Best known for her modernist linocuts, Sybil Andrews’ The Winch (1930) encapsulates a primary focus of the Grosvenor School artists: industrial Britain. Military Conscription for young men during the First World War led to women being recruited into traditionally male jobs, and it was as an apprentice welder working on the first all-metal airplanes that Andrews was exposed to industrial labour. In The Winch, Andrews depicts two men manually operating a piece of machinery in unison. The centrifugal composition appears to rotate around the focal point of the winch, creating the impression of movement and capturing the unrelenting rhythm of industrial labour. Uniformly dressed and with no facial features, the two anonymous men seemingly bend to the forces of the machine’s surrounding vortex. There is a mechanized quality to the bodies of the two men: an example of Andrews’ interest in the relationship between man and the machine, which permeates several of her linocuts. Although not explicitly political or critical, The Winch is not entirely celebratory of the rapid industrialisation taking place in Britain. Instead, there are hints of an underlying anxiety about the vast technological advancements of the time, which certainly existed in a society still reeling from the effects of the First World War.
Provenance
Lumley Cazalet Gallery, London Private British Collection Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
1930 Linocut from three blocks in orange, viridian and dark blue, on light cream oriental tissue paper, with margins. I. 22.3 x 30.5 cm (8 3/4 x 12 in.) S. 25.4 x 32.8 cm (10 x 12 7/8 in.) Signed, titled and numbered 16/50 in pencil (there were also 6 trial proofs and 5 experimental proofs), framed.