Artist of the Day, June 22, 2026 : David Bomberg, a British painter (#1559)

 David Garshen Bomberg (1890 – 1957) was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.

Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson, and Dora Carrington. Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I; typically using a limited number of striking colours, turning humans into simple, angular shapes, and sometimes overlaying the whole painting a strong grid-work colouring scheme. He was expelled from the Slade School of Art in 1913, with agreement between senior teachers Tonks, Frederick Brown and Philip Wilson Steer, because of the audacity of his breach from the conventional approach of that time.

Whether because his faith in the machine age had been shattered by his experiences as a private soldier in the trenches or because of the pervasive retrogressive attitude towards modernism in Britain, Bomberg moved to a more figurative style in the 1920s and his work became increasingly dominated by portraits and landscapes drawn from nature. Gradually developing a more expressionist technique, he travelled widely through the Middle East and Europe.

From 1945 to 1953, Bomberg worked as a teacher at Borough Polytechnic (now London South Bank University) in London, where his pupils included Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Philip Holmes, Cliff Holden, Edna Mann, Dorothy Mead, Gustav Metzger, Dennis Creffield, Cecil Bailey, and Miles Richmond. David Bomberg House, one of the student halls of residences at London South Bank University, is named in his honox0r. He was married to landscape painter Lilian Holt.

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Self-Portrait, 1932

Raie, the Artist’s Sister, 1910

Vision of Ezekiel, 1912

Bathing Scene, 1913

Family Bereavement, 1913

Racehorses, 1913

Su-Jitsu, 1913

Artwork Caption Sketches for ‘The Dancer’,  1913–14

In the Hold, 1913-14

Study for The Mud Bath, 1914

The Dancer, 1914

The Mud Bath, 1914

Artwork Caption Barges, 1919

Sappers at Work: Canadian Tunnelling Company, R14, St Eloi, 1919

Sappers at Work: Canadian Tunnelling Company, R14, St Eloi, 1919

Sappers Under Hill 60, 1919

Study for Two Figures in a Composition, 1919–20

Ghetto Theatre, 1920

Imaginative Composition: The Tent, 1923

Lilian Painting David (Painting Lilian) 1929

Portrait of John Rodker, 1931

The City on the Rock, Evening, Ronda, Spain, 1935

The Artist's Wife and Baby, 1937

The Baby Diana, 1937

Bomb Store,1942

Bomb Store,1942

Tregor and Tregoff, Cornwall, 1947

Vigilante, 1955

Ronda, Spain, 1957