Signed u.r.: Kramer

Gouache with brush, pen and indian ink, 25 by 18.5 cm

Kramer entered the Slade School of Art in 1913, just a year prior to the outbreak of War. During his time here he met many auspicious figures in British art of the period including David Bomberg, Mark Gertler and William Roberts (Kramer’s sister Sarah would later marry Roberts). Although he refused to be pinned down to a particular artistic movement, he joined the London Group in 1915 through which he was invited to show with the Vorticist. Kramer’s work of the 1910s bears the closest comparison with the work of this movement, such as in dynamic works like this which employ a strongly graphic (almost abstracted) two-colour composition. This style also lent itself well to contemporary illustration, with several of Kramer’s woodcuts appearing in the Vorticist’s literary magazine Blast.