GALLERIES

their single ‘chef’ figures shoe horned into the quirky, traditional piece ofkitchen equipment. But, more often the mood is one of distinctly dark humour – Goya, Guston, de Chirico, Picasso are all invoked here along with much else from European art history – as Rose manipulates his often mannequin puppet like figures into a kind oftheatre ofthe absurd, archetypal abstractions as he has suggested, that serve as metaphors for “the slow dumbing down ofthe human spirit” in a world ofdark forces. It is with real sadness that everyone at Galleries learnt ofthe recent death, following a fall and a broken hip earlier this summer, ofthe remarkable, independent dealer, Manya Igel. She had been a early advertiser the magazine since its beginnings in the 1980s and appeared in it consistently until a year or two back. In her early 90s when she died, she was last seen wheeling and dealing (from her chair) on her stand at September’s LAPADA Fair, so it is true to say that she was doing what she loved best right up to the last possible moment. Coming to the UK from Hungary as a refugee from Nazism, she had had much hardship to put up with before she found her passion in the 70s, namely dealing with a whole generation ofyounger tonal painters ofa New English Art Club persuasion – Fred Cuming, Bernard Dunstan, Julian Bailey, Ken Howard et al. She always remained incredibly loyal to them and, by and large, they to her, so she will be much missed among sections ofthe artistic community too – as will her pugnacious, forthright personality. News just in ofan ambitious exhibition ofcontemporary Realist art at Beaux Arts in London. Curated by Paul Greenhalgh, Director ofNorwich’s Sainsbury Centre and entitled, ‘Poetry ofthe Real’, it takes place in two parts, from this month until March. We are promised Bacon, Sickert, Hockney and Auerbach and among the younger generation ofcontemporary painters Chris Stevens, who curated an excellent show along similar lines at the Sainsbury Centre a couple ofyears ago, Jonathan Leaman and Ray Richardson. In short an important show to come back to at more length in the New Year. Nicholas Usherwood such, the instinctive richness and variety of her mark-making not to mention the clarity of structure that these seem to bring to her work, giving this latest group of paintings an austere grandeur. With cultural roots in three countries – British nationality and upbringing, American art education and Italian residency – William Balthazar Rose has a rather more cosmopolitan background than most and his often distinctly troubling and cultured figurative paintings have, over the years, sometimes also conveyed a sense of questing rootlessness. Where, quite, do they ‘belong’? Well, as this powerful new show at the Victoria Art Gallery makes very plain, Rose has found an elegant, if unlikely, solution to the issue, namely the unity of theme and location provided by the world of chefs and kitchens. This is very much not the world of fine dining however but rather the claustrophobic, over heated, both physically and emotionally, spaces where the food is prepared, a world where, when you come to think about it, hierarchies are rigidly structured, from head chef to kitchen skivvy, along the most arcane lines. Rose takes full advantage of the opportunities it provides, having both a lot of fun, as in the ‘chopping block’ paintings with NOVEMBER 2017 GALLERIES 9 from left W illiam Balthazar Rose ‘Female Cook With Cleaver’ Victoria Art Gallery David Bomberg ‘Study for Russian Ballet’ Waterhouse & Dodd Margie Andrew-Reichelt ‘Monochrome’ NOA17 Bargehouse Oxo Tower Wharf Janine Baldwin ‘First Light Over Loch Linnhe’ Birch Tree Gallery Philip Harris ‘Arizona Bloom’ Beaux Arts M anya Igel Chopping block Rhyming couplet