Leon Kossoff - London Landscapes

The exhibition includes over 90 drawings and 10 paintings, many rarely shown before, and spanning the artist's career: from City bomb sites of the early 1950's to recent drawings of Arnold Circus, a community of redbrick buildings off Shoreditch High Street that were London's most radical experiment in social housing when they were unveiled in 1900. Kossoff's London opens up between these two poles to reveal his feel for quickness and change: buildings on the point of demolition; the railway network as the process of electrification begins; swimming pools swarming with children; streets; schools; grand London churches that serve successive waves of immigrants (Huguenot, Jewish, Bengali); stations; back gardens, and trains - overground and underground - carrying millions of Londoners in and out of the city, day after day, as the city transforms itself around them… (more)