Sibylline Figure
About this artwork
Creme painted Sibylline Figure, which means ‘prophet’, at the age of twenty-one. It shows the influence of Jankel Adler, the Polish refugee artist who had settled in Glasgow in 1941. Adler knew Picasso personally and this link was a vital doorway for Creme. Influenced by Picasso’s recent work, Sibylline Figure is an astonishingly mature and advanced painting for an artist of his age, immediately putting him in the front rank of the Glasgow avant-garde, and on a par with the Two Roberts, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde. The first work by Creme to enter a British public collection, he regarded it as his most important painting.
Updated 2021
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artist:Benjamin CremeScottish (1922 - 2016)
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title:Sibylline Figure
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date created:1943
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materials:Oil on canvas
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measurements:92.00 x 71.00 cm; Framed: 110.00 x 89.00 x 6.00 cm
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object type:
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credit line:Purchased (Knapping Fund) 2019
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accession number:GMA 5636
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gallery:
Benjamin Creme
Benjamin Creme
Benjamin Creme was born in Glasgow to an Irish mother and a Russian-Jewish father. He studied briefly at the Glasgow School of Art but his parents did not encourage his interest in art. At the age of seventeen he held a joint exhibition with a friend at a Trade Union club in Glasgow. The refugee...