Sybil Andrews

Founded in 1925, during a most turbulent period in Britain’s history, the Grosvenor School of Modern Art revived the country’s interest in printmaking. The School’s distinctively vibrant, dynamic views of everyday life in frenetic London and its environs, greatly inspired by Futurism, Cubism, and Vorticism, delighted the British public during the Interwar years. Led by lecturer Claude Flight, students and staff members of the Grosvenor School, including Sybil Andrews, Cyril Power, and Lill Tschudi, favored the color linoleum cut print, considering it the perfect mode of expression. They found the punchy graphics rendered by this technique ideal for depicting the utopian, modernized country Britain was striving to become.

From 1929-1927, Andrews and Power collaborated to create advertisements for the London Passengers Transport Board, signing their works Andrew Power. Their posters celebrated a new age of recreation in Britain, advertising the exciting array of sporting and leisure activities Londoners could suddenly access by Tube. For many Londoners, these cutting-edge posters would have been their first experience with modern art. 

Expertly printed from four separate blocks, Sybil Andrews’ linoleum cut Speedway was born out of a poster commission for the Transport Board. No posters of this subject ever came to fruition, though Andrews employed her energetic composition of man melded with machine to create an edition of 60 hand-printed color linocuts on various fibrous papers. Speedway thrilled Andrews’ compatriots as it appealed to Britain's fascination with rapidity and technology. Like the artist’s three mechanoid motorists, 1930s England was in its own race to develop in the machine age.