Raised in Tzarist pre-revolutionary Russia Boris Anrep became an important British artist in the first half of the twentieth century, yet until now has never had a full overview of his considerable artistic output. A member of the Bloomsbury and Garsington sets of Edwardian England, he counted the writer Virginia Woolf, the economist John Maynard Keynes, and the painter Augustus John among his many friends. Discover Anrep’s fascinating story and learn about the many mosaics he created, some of them in the most important institutions in Britain.
He trained for fine arts but chose instead to create superb mosaics; thousands walk over his art every week in Tate Britain and the National Gallery. There are immense mosaics by him in Westminster Cathedral and the Bank of England, and his work is considered of sufficient importance to be in the collections of the V&A in London and the MAG in Birmingham. This book is the first complete appraisal of Boris Anrep’s oeuvre, and attempts to shine a light on his considerable output as a mosaic artist. It also looks at his great work in bringing modernity and a contemporary sensibility to mosaics in Britain. He is also important for shifting the position of the artist away from simply designing the mosaics to being right at the heart of their entire creation.
