Underground
1951
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
1951
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Underground is a 1951 by Peter Lanyon, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
Peter Lanyon’s 1951 print *Underground* is abstract and made with screenprint. It’s one of the first times British artists used this method for fine art prints. Lanyon learned the process from American artist Warren Mackenzie who showed him how to clean stencils with turpentine, leaving the ghostly background we see here. The title points to mines, burial grounds, and caves beneath Cornwall’s ground. As a Cornishman, Lanyon knew these hidden spaces shaped local life and memory. The stain-like background comes from washing off colored stencils with turpentine. Check out the technique called impasto next.
A colour screen print on paper by Peter Lanyon from 1951, this work features an ochery-green translucent background created by washing off preliminary stencil colours with turpentine. A pale blue square outline at the centre encloses two red ovals divided by a blue line, with black calligraphic marks overlaid on the red shapes. The title *Underground* reflects Lanyon’s Cornish heritage and his engagement with the subterranean spaces of mines, burial grounds, and caves beneath the region’s landscape. The print is notable as one of the earliest uses of screenprinting as a fine art medium in…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Peter Lanyon spent years gliding over Cornwall’s jagged cliffs in a tiny plane, mapping the land from the air before he put brush to canvas.
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