Nicol Allan Collages. Exhibition at the Laure Genillard Gallery, London. Curator Rye Dag Homboe - 11th January 2022

"Composition" 9,4 x 8,9 -1965 - Catalog Drawings&Collages 1979

For the first time, last November 2021 and after decades of obscurity, the first exhibition- inaugurated with the launching of a book of the same name - of the works by American artist Nicol Allan: Collages - was held at the Laure Genillard Gallery in London.

Exhibition curator Rye Dag Holmboe, also editor of the book - with essays co-written with Sarah Allan - is a Norwegian/English writer with a PhD from University College London; he has published in various academic and artistic journals.

The choice of this specific artist has not been by chance but coincided with personal reasons.

In 1979 his great uncle Christopher Hewett exhibited the artist at the Taranman Art Gallery, London (1974-1983). The gallery also edited an exhibition catalog: Nicol Allan, Drawings&Collages, with a prologue by Gerald Nordland (1927-2019) then director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, a prominent museum director, art critic, educator and author.

Nicol Allan is an almost unknown artist who lived and worked between The United States and Britain. For more than half a century, Allan produced sumi, wood reliefs, watercolors and ocasionally oils. His main medium however was paper collage.

His fragile and intimate works float between figuration and abstraction and allude to the natural world, the landscape and human life. The collages relate in a subtle and original way to the main movements of abstract art of the 20 th century, as well as to other traditions such as Folk Art or Japanese and Chinese calligraphy.