Sidney Hunt (1896–1940) was a British draughtsman, painter, poet and editor who published the avant-garde journal '' Ray'' between 1926 and 1927.

Life

Sidney James Hunt was born in 1896 and studied at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

in London. During the 1920s he designed

bookplates An ''Ex Libris'' (from ''ex-librīs'', ), also known as a bookplate (or book-plate, as it was commonly styled until the early 20th century), is a printed or decorative label pasted into a book, often on the front endpaper, to indicate ownership. ...

and contributed modern-style drawings for several international art magazines, such as ''Artwork'', ''Der Querschnitt'', ''

Der Sturm ''Der Sturm'' () was a German List of avant-garde magazines, avant-garde art and literary magazine founded by Herwarth Walden, covering Expressionism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, among other artistic movements. It was published between 1910 an ...

'', ''Tambour'' and ''Contimporanul''. Hunt also published experimental poems in modern journals, such as '' Transition'', ''Seed'', and '' Blues: A Magazine of New Rhythms''. In October 1925, he held his first solo exhibition at the Mayor Gallery in London. Between 1926 and 1932, he was a member of the

Seven and Five Society The Seven and Five Society was an art group of seven painters and five sculptors created in 1919 and based in London. The group was originally intended to encompass traditional, conservative artistic sensibilities. The first exhibition catalogue s ...

, one of the most progressive art societies in interwar England. In 1926 and 1927, Hunt edited the avant-garde magazine '' Ray'', which has been described as the English equivalent of influential art journals from the 1920s such as ''Merz'', ''Mecano'' and ''De Stijl''. '' Ray'' featured work of leading figures of the European avant-garde such as

Kurt Schwitters Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, constructivism, surrealism, poetry, sound, pain ...

El Lissitzky Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (russian: link=no, Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий, ; – 30 December 1941), better known as El Lissitzky (russian: link=no, Эль Лиси́цкий; yi, על ליסיצקי), was a Russian artist ...

Theo van Doesburg Theo van Doesburg (, 30 August 1883 – 7 March 1931) was a Dutch artist, who practiced painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl. He was married to artist, pianist and choreographer Nelly ...

Naum Gabo Naum Gabo, born Naum Neemia Pevsner (23 August 1977) (Hebrew: נחום נחמיה פבזנר), was an influential sculptor, theorist, and key figure in Russia's post-Revolution avant-garde and the subsequent development of twentieth-century scul ...

and

Hans Arp Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp (16 September 1886 – 7 June 1966), better known as Jean Arp in English, was a German-French sculptor, painter, and poet. He was known as a Dadaist and an abstract artist. Early life Arp was born in Straßburg (now Stras ...

. It has been said that Hunt died in his studio in 1940, aged forty-four, during

The Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

Style

Much of Hunt's work is homoerotic; he had homosexual patrons like Sir Edward Marsh;

Alfred Flechtheim Alfred Flechtheim (1 April 1878 – 9 March 1937) was a German Jewish art dealer, art collector, journalist and publisher persecuted by the Nazis. Early years Flechtheim was born into a Jewish merchant family; his father, Emil Flechtheim, was a g ...

reproduced his Ganymede in ''Der Querschnitt'' (1921, VIII, p. 346); his drawings of boys appeared with those of

Ralph Chubb Ralph Nicholas Chubb (8 February 1892 – 14 January 1960) was an English poet, Printer (publisher), printer and artist. Heavily influenced by Walt Whitman, Whitman, William Blake, Blake, and the Romanticism, Romantics, his work was the creati ...

in ''The Island'' in 1931; the bookplates he produced feature naked youths; and

Oswell Blakeston Oswell Blakeston was the pseudonym of Henry Joseph Hasslacher (1907–1985), a British writer and artist who also worked in the film industry, made some experimental films, and wrote extensively on film theory. He was also a poet and wrote in non-f ...

published his experimental prose poem fantasies of 18-year-old hermaphrodites in the first, 1933 issue of ''Seed'' (p. 7). His themes included boys bathing, sunbathing, posing with pansies and possibly boy prostitutes on a "Saturday afternoon" in ''Artwork'' (1924, I, p. 75). He is one of the few modernist artists to use abstraction to express the essentials of male beauty in simplified forms like his painting of "Ganymede" or by contrasts of black and white as in "Drawing" (1922). As Candela has speculated, he may also be the creator of the photomontages that he published in ''Ray'' (pp. 2, 15 and 27), as by the otherwise unknown P. Capeli. His work as a pioneer of British modernism and as an abstract gay artist deserves much more reassessment.

References

External links

* Sidney Hunt'
bookplate
with Nietzsche quote "Curved is the path of eternity", Library of Congress, Washington DC. * Sidney Hunt'
bookplate
of Bella C. Landauer with "Lend a hand" motto, Library of Congress, Washington DC. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hunt, Sidney 1896 births 1940 deaths Book artists British draughtsmen Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art British male poets British civilians killed in World War II Deaths by airstrike during World War II British LGBT painters British LGBT poets 20th-century LGBT people