CYRIL EDWARD POWER 1872-1951
Born in Bury St Edmunds, East Anglia, Power originally followed in the footsteps of his father and pursued a successful career as an architect. At the outbreak of the First World War, he was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps, an experience that would affect him deeply for the rest of his life. It has been speculated that the horrors he saw and experienced during air raids contributed significantly to his sharp change of careers in the early 1920s; he left his wife and family and moved to London with the young artist Sybil Andrews. The pair would remain in a close working partnership until the late 1930s, exploring revolutionary art practices and enrolling in the Grosvenor School, where Power became both a student and a teacher. He exhibited in the First Exhibition of British Lino-Cuts in 1929 at the Redfern Gallery and continued to exhibit regularly in London and abroad.
Perhaps the best known of the Grosvenor School artists, Power worked prolifically up until the outbreak of the Second World War, sharing a studio with Andrews until 1938. He worked as a surveyor for the Heavy Rescue Squad at Wandsworth Town Hall during the war, while also lecturing on painting and linocuting in New Malden and Kingston. Although he painted and did some etching, it is his linocuts which truly display his masterful handling of curves, colour, form and line as he captures the pace and rhythm of modern life .
His work is held in collections worldwide, including the British Museum, National Gallery of Australia, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
