Hermes Bolton

Blair Hughes-Stanton was the only son of a successful landscape painter, Sir Herbert Hughes-Stanton. He had little formal education, joining a cadet school ship at the age of 13. As an artist, he trained at the Byam Shaw School of Art, where he was greatly influenced by Leon Underwood. In 1921, he moved to Underwood’s new school in Hammersmith and when Underwood went to America in 1925, Hughes-Stanton was left in charge of the school. Although he continued to paint and draw, he soon gained a reputation for his wood-engravings. Hughes-Stanton's first published works were illustrations to T.E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillar’s of Wisdom, 1926. He married Gertrude Hermes, a well known British printmaker, in the same year. Much of Hughes-Stanton’s subsequent work was in the form of illustrations for private press books, first with the Cressent and Golden Cockerel Presses and then, from 1930–33, for the Gregynog Press in Wales. Between 1928–30, he was closely associated with D.H. Lawrence and illustrated several of his books. It was partly in response to the philosophy of these novels and partly to his new affair with Ida Graves that he created the overtly sexual iconography that marks the prints of this period. In 1933–36, he established Gemini Press, with the backing of Robert Sainsbury, but by 1935, the Depression had put an end to commissions for illustrative works, and he returned to the single sheet print. Hughes-Stanton's prints of the later 1930s are notable in their concern with modernist abstraction. He won an international prize for engraving at the Venice Biennale in 1938. During World War II, he worked in camouflage with the Royal Engineers, after which he was sent to Greece, where he was captured, became a PoW, and was shot in the face. Following the war, commissions for private press books dried up, and his war wound seriously affected his three-dimensional vision. He found work teaching at Westminster School of Art 1947–48, and from 1948 Hughes-Stanton was a lecturer in printmaking and drawing at the Society of Wood Engravers, St. Martins and the Central School of Art. He later lived in Manningtree, Essex.

Beginning in the early 20th century, abstract art became a leading style of modernism. Rather than portray the world in a way that represented reality, as had been the dominating style of Western art in the previous centuries, abstract paintings, prints and sculptures are marked by a shift to geometric forms, gestural shapes and experimentation with color to express ideas, subject matter and scenes.

Although abstract art flourished in the early 1900s, propelled by movements like Fauvism and Cubism, it was rooted in the 19th century. In the 1840s, J.M.W. Turner emphasized light and motion for atmospheric paintings in which concrete details were blurred, and Paul Cézanne challenged traditional expectations of perspective in the 1890s.

Some of the earliest abstract artists — Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint — expanded on these breakthroughs while using vivid colors and forms to channel spiritual concepts. Painter Piet Mondrian, a Dutch pioneer of the art movement, explored geometric abstraction partly owing to his belief in Theosophy, which is grounded in a search for higher spiritual truths and embraces philosophers of the Renaissance period and medieval mystics. Black Square, a daringly simple 1913 work by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, was a watershed statement on creating art that was free “from the dead weight of the real world,” as he later wrote.

Surrealism in the 1920s, led by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Meret Oppenheim and others, saw painters creating abstract pieces in order to connect to the subconscious. When Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York during the mid-20th century, it similarly centered on the process of creation, in which Helen Frankenthaler’s expressive “soak-stain” technique, Jackson Pollock’s drips of paint, and Mark Rothko’s planes of color were a radical new type of abstraction.

Conceptual art, Pop art, Hard-Edge painting and many other movements offered fresh approaches to abstraction that continued into the 21st century, with major contemporary artists now exploring it, including Anish Kapoor, Mark Bradford, El Anatsui and Julie Mehretu.

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Bring energy and an array of welcome colors and textures into your space by decorating with figurative fine-art prints and works on paper.

Figurative art stands in contrast to abstract art, which is more expressive than representational. The oldest-known work of figurative art is a figurative painting — specifically, a rock painting of an animal made over 40,000 years ago in Borneo. This remnant of a remote past has long faded, but its depiction of a cattle-like creature in elegant ocher markings endures.

Since then, figurative art has evolved significantly as it continues to represent the world, including a breadth of works on paper, including printmaking. This includes woodcuts, which are a type of relief print with perennial popularity among collectors. The artist carves into a block and applies ink to the raised surface, which is then pressed onto paper. There are also planographic prints, which use metal plates, stones or other flat surfaces as their base. The artist will often draw on the surface with grease crayon and then apply ink to those markings. Lithographs are a common version of planographic prints.

Figurative art printmaking was especially popular during the height of the Pop art movement, and this kind of work can be seen in artist Andy Warhol’s extensive use of photographic silkscreen printing. Everyday objects, logos and scenes were given a unique twist, whether in the style of a comic strip or in the use of neon colors.

Explore an impressive collection of figurative art prints for sale on 1stDibs and read about how to arrange your wall art.