PRIVATE VIEW
Prunela Clough & Toko Shinoda Annely Juda Gallery, London W1
The pairing of Prunella Clough and Toko Shinoda at the Annely Juda Gallery is a very neat one. Both have had long careers as makers of the finest abstract art, yet neither is as well known as they might be. Clough's work (above) is, of course, famous enough here, though her resistance to retrospectives, and her insistence that the price of her work be kept down, has hindered the spread of her reputation further afield. Shinoda, arguably one of the greatest of all 20th-century Japanese artists, has never exhibited in London before.
The Clough show is devoted to works on paper, beginning in 1949 and coming up to date - as close to a retrospective of her work as one is likely to get. Many of the works have the look of studio scratchings, but there are some beauties as well. Upstairs, the Shinoda exhibition is a more formal affair: elegant, minimal and very, very composed. Her roots as a calligrapher are clear, as are her connections with American art of the 1950s, but she is quite obviously a major artist in her own right.
Both shows should be seen by anyone with an interest in the development of abstraction in the later 20th century.
Prunela Clough and Toko Shinoda are at Annely Juda, 23 Dering Street, London W1 (0171-629 7578) to 24 Oct
Richard Ingleby
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