Ben NICHOLSON (1894-1982). Still life, pear studies, 1944. Pencil, dated. Bearing on the back a British Council Fine Arts Department exhibition label "Ben Nicholson, Exhibition Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels. 1954/5". Height 31 cm - Width 22.5 cm Note: considered the father of abstract art in Great Britain, his meeting with Mondrian was decisive, and he experimented with geometric abstraction and then neoplasticism. He befriended Braque, Brancusi and Arp. He then joined the Abstraction-Création movement, and was a founding member of UNIT ONE in 1933, alongside Paul Nash and Henry Moore. His return to France after the war, and the influence of the Ecole de Paris, brought him back to his early favorite subject, the "geometric" still life. His work can be seen in the collections of London's Tate Gallery. Bibliography: reproduced as n°124 in the catalog Ben Nicholson, Paintings, Herbert Read. Provenance: acquired directly from the artist on the occasion of an exhibition in Paris in February 1955. Handwritten letter from the artist to the buyer, the current owner of the drawing.