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Ben Nicholson (April 10, 1894 - February 6, 1982),
British abstract painter, was born in Denham,
Buckinghamshire.  His father was the painter
William Nicholson (artist)|Sir William Nicholson,
and his sister Nancy Nicholson.  The family moved
to London in 1896.

He travelled to New York in 1917 for an operation
on his tonsils, then visited other American
cities, returning to England in 1918.  From 1920
to 1938 he was married to the painter Winifred
Nicholson and lived in London.  After his first
exhibition of figurative works in London in 1922,
his work began to be influenced by Synthetic
Cubism, and later by the primitive style of Henri
Rousseau|Rousseau.  In London, Nicholson met the
sculptors Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore.  On
visits to Paris he met Piet Mondrian|Mondrian,
whose work in the neoplasticism|neoplastic style
was to influence him in an abstract direction, and
Pablo Picasso|Picasso, whose cubism would also
find its way into his work.  His gift, however,
was the ability to incorporate these European
trends into a new style that was recognizably his
own.  He first visited St. Ives, Cornwall in 1928,
where he met the fisherman and painter Alfred
Wallis.  In Paris in 1933 he made his first wood
relief, White Relief, which contained only right
angles and circles.  In 1934 he was one of the
editors of CIRCLE, an influential monograph on
constructivism|constructivist art and one of the
founding documents of modern art.  He was also a
member of the artists' group Unit One.  From 1938
to 1951 he was married to Hepworth.  

In 1939 Nicholson moved to St. Ives, Cornwall
where a community of artists, including John Piper
(artist)|John Piper, soon developed.  Nicholson
began by painting landscapes and coloured abstract
reliefs, and then turned to linear abstract
paintings.  He believed that abstract art should
be enjoyed by the general public, as shown by the
Nicholson Wall, a mural he created for the garden
of Sutton Place in Guildford, Surrey.  In 1943 he
joined the St. Ives Society of Artists.  A
retrospective exhibition of his work was shown at
the Tate Gallery in London in 1955.  

Nicholson married the photographer Felicitas
Vogler in 1957 and moved to Castagnola,
Switzerland, in 1958.  In 1968 he received the
British Order of Merit (OM).  In 1971 he separated
from Vogler and moved to Cambridge.  In 1977 he
divorced.  He died in London and was cremated at
Golders Green cemetery.

Some of Nicholson's works can be seen at the Tate
St Ives gallery, and at Kettle's Yard Art Gallery
in Cambridge.

==References==
*Ben Nicholson: Razor Edge (1985 film)
*http://www.britainunlimited.com/Biogs/Nicholson.h
tm Detailed timeline at Britain Unlimited
2003-09-14
*Norbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson (2001, with 250
colour plates, ISBN 0714828130)