The London painter’s works have become spookily popular of late
Collectors of the work of early 20th-century English artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare have, up until now, been of a type. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin has a notable number of paintings, as did the late Genesis P-Orridge – founder of industrial sound provocateurs Throbbing Gristle.
Born in east London in 1886, the son of a policeman, Spare launched his career to a fanfare of critical acclaim with a solo show at the Bruton Gallery in 1907, which saw his distinctive black line compared to Aubrey Beardsley. He is often lazily lumped in with the pantomime shenanigans of fellow fin de siècle oddball Aleister Crowley. The two crossed paths many times and both developed their own alternative belief systems, incorporating sigils, grimoires and spells.
Tragically, hundreds of his pictures of working-class Cockneys were destroyed during the Blitz in 1941, after a bomb hit his studio, also leaving him in dire straits. But the bulk of his “sidereal” work survives. Artist Shezad Dawood has several pieces: “I feel there is something compelling about them that actually gets under the skin of reality and appearance – perhaps the very substrate of glamour and magic.
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