* EDITH SIMON (GERMAN / BRITISH 1917-2003)
HOMAGE TO JOHN BELLANY

painted composition sculpture, signed to base

61cm high

Provenance: lot 2336, The Scottish Contemporary Art Auction 20th December 2015 where acquired by the current vendor.
Note: Edith was born on 18th. May 1917 in Berlin, Germany where her family had lived for generations. Her father Walter Simon was a much decorated cavalry officer in the First World War, and a prosperous business owner in peacetime. Her school was The Furstin-Bismark Gymnasium where she received a good liberal education, and excelled at art and history. In 1927 at the age of 10 her drawings were first published in a newspaper. As the political climate in Germany became increasingly threatening Walter Simon wisely decided the family would be safer if they left Germany and move to London, much to Edith’s dismay. In 1932 Edith and her sister Inge arrived in London to join the family. Edith taught herself English and then attended the Slade and Central School of Art, became involved with a group of left wing artists and was in 1933 a founder member of Artists International Association (AIA). In 1934 she exhibited a portrait of the first committee of the AIA at an exhibition at 64 Charlotte Street London. Her first book for children ‘Somersaults and Strange Company’ was published in 1934 and she began work on a novel ‘The Chosen’ while translating Arthur Koestler’s ‘The Gladiators’ into English. Her translation was later translated back into German when the original manuscript was lost. In 1940 ‘The Chosen’ was published (to great critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic) although all but a few copies were destroyed in the blitz. Nothing daunted her and the second novel ‘Biting the Blue Finger’ was published in 1942 the year in which she met a scientist Eric Reeve. They were married shortly afterwards. Eric and Edith moved to Edinburgh in 1947 where Eric took up a post with the new genetics department at Edinburgh University while Edith continued her career as author. She had 17 books published, contemporary novels, historical novels, and histories.

1969 began an increasing focus on art, with an exhibition at the Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh in 1970 followed in 1971 by an exhibition of mobile sculptures and papercut bas-relief pictures at Galerie Balans in Amsterdam and at the Stads Schourburg Galerie Tilbourg. In 1972 Edith’s last book ‘The Anglo Saxon Manner’ was published. From the first mobile sculptures and papercuts Edith went on to explore making drawings in one continuous line without lifting pen from paper, see-through pictures in translucent layers, sculpture in stained wood, ciment-fondue, vacuum formed perspex, cast polyester resin, cold-cast bronze, copper, aluminium, metal sheet, carved plaster, painted glass, painted chairs, baths, and murals in paint and wood veneer. She had so many new ideas and techniques that it was hard to keep up. The continuous line pictures developed into three dimensions with resin supported rope being the continuous line, eventually Edith stopped doing the continuous line drawings when they were no longer enough of a challenge. The paper cuts increased in difficulty with more and more layers of different coloured paper. The layers had to be in the correct order to create the correct highlight and shadow tones, and so cutting down to the colour needed did not cause the whole set of outer layers to fall off. Edith therefore had to be able to “see” what the picture would look like, what colour went where and see the three dimensional set of colour layers in her mind’s eye, before she started on any picture. She exhibited at the Edinburgh Festival every year until 2001 as well as exhibitions in London and Glasgow. The last 8 years of her life were a battle against failing health – she worked attached to a long oxygen line, but was still producing a good number of papercuts.