Ben Nicholson
(b. 1894) Buckinghamshire, England.
His father was Sir William Nicholson, an English Impressionist painter.
Nicholson was one of the most important British modernist artists who started the ball rolling for abstraction in the UK.
He enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1911 and left after one year to work in France. He was said to have been more interested in playing billiards than taking life drawing classes.
While living in London, his next door neighbour was artist Mondrian.
Nicholson along with his friends Paul Nash, Henry Moore, Edward Burra and Barbara Hepworth (who he later married) founded Unit One – a group of painters, sculptors and architects.
Barbara Hepworth become his second wife. Nicholson & Hepworth returned to St. Ives with artists, Gabo and Stokes and established an international reputation. After the war he lived in London, Cambridge and Switzerland and married for a third time to Felicitas Vogler.
Ben Nicholson paintings can be seen in Kettles yard, Cambridge. https://www.kettlesyard.co.uk
