Edward Burra | Tate Britain
This new Tate show of Edward Burra - one of the artists I’ve covered most on here - is the first retrospective in London in 40 years.
Although Burra as a person was elusive and publicity shy (giving one filmed interview total during his long life), he isn’t an obscure figure. He had a monograph show at the Tate prior to his death, a Hayward exhibition in 1985 and a large show at Pallant House in Chichester in 2011. This latest one is the first I’ve been to in person though.
It’s easy to pick holes in the new Tate exhibition, which seems like a bit of an afterthought on their part. The galleries are a bit poky and the sequencing is eccentric: it’s divided by nation, reflecting Burra’s love of travelling despite his crippling arthritis and semi-invalid life in what he termed “tinkerbell town”, his home in Rye. So, one room for France, one for the US, one for Spain, and finishing up with his sinister war paintings, theatre sets and late landscapes. We have to backtrack and leave via the entrance.
‘Three Sailors at the Bar’ (1930)
These are minor quibbles though; I’m a Burra fan, and this is a chance to see the work up close.
I’ll go back and add impressions in throughout the summer and autumn. For now, I’ll leave it at one of the works on display, pictured above, from my favourite Burra period: the early caricatures of people having fun. This time, it’s three sailors, their bulges lovingly delineated by Burra’s brush (the watercolour brush the only one his arthritic hands had the physical strength to hold). Note the surreally floating table, the obsessively worked woodgrain, the visual joke of the chrome… cock.
I’ll add in more as I go.
Edward Burra is at Tate Britain (London). 13 June - 19 October 2025