item details
NameThe force that through the green fuse drives the flower
ProductionCeri Richards; painter; 1945
Classificationoil paintings
Materialsoil paint, canvas
Materials Summaryoil on canvas
DimensionsImage: 361mm (height), 285mm (length)
Registration Number1972-0002-1
Credit linePurchased 1972 with Ellen Eames Collection funds
Overview
Hybrid plant and human forms thrust up from the earth in Ceri Richards’ surreal painting. They were inspired by the images of procreation, growth, decay, and death in Dylan Thomas’s 1933 poem of the same name.
For Richards, surrealism was a particularly appropriate mode of expression during World War II. He based many works on Thomas’ poem, seeing its images of nature’s intrinsic violence as a metaphor for the destructiveness of war.
The profusion of vegetable and human forms recalls earlier paintings by the German surrealist Max Ernst. Richards’ work, in its poetic approach, was also an expression of the neo-Romanticism that informed British art in the 1940s.