Gluck

A major retrospective of the British painter, Gluck (1895-1978). Featuring 32 works including Gluck’s most significant painting, Medallion (1937), the exhibition will explore the fascinating life, work and legacy of a pioneering artist of her generation.

Hannah Gluckstein was one of the most mercurial and rebellious artists of her day. By the age of 23, she had begun to call herself Gluck (“no prefix, suffix, or quotes”), had adopted men’s clothing, cropped her hair, and begun to smoke a pipe. Fiercely individual, Gluck identified with no artistic school or movement and showed her work only in solo exhibitions, where it was displayed in a special frame she invented and patented. ‘The Gluck Frame’ had a three-tiered design and was painted or papered to match the wall on which it was hung, giving the illusion that the painting was part of the architecture of the room. It was exhibited at British Art in Industry exhibitions and became an integral part of Modernist and Art Deco interiors of the 1930s.