Haulers

Sybil Andrews

Sybil Andrews' imagery is highly stylized. In The Haulers, strength, power, and movement are rendered via repetition of lines and elements although the picture plane is quite flat. The great weight being pulled by the haulers is suggested by the tautness of black ropes biting into their curved shoulders and backs and the width between their front and back legs. Their blocked feet are planted by the strain. While the men work in unison, the artist gave them individuality with varied coloring of their clothes and the tilts of their heads.

After WWI Andrews returned to Bury St. Edmunds where she taught school and studied art with Cyril E. Power, with whom she would have a close working relationship for the next two decades. In 1922, Andrews moved to London and attended Heatherley’s School of Fine Art and, in 1925, she joined the newly formed Grosvenor School of Modern Art, working as a secretary while learning the techniques of color linocut from Claude Flight.

In 1924 Andrews, who had worked as a welder on Bristol Fighter planes during World War I, wrote a manifesto titled "The Aims of Art To-Day" in which she posited that art should reflect the current world, and in the 1920s this meant doing away with "pretty" imagery in favor of the kind which addressed the rough, dirty progress of industrialization, as well as physical human feats such as sports and labor. As with many pioneering women artists of the early 20th century, her work flew under the radar throughout much of the art world despite her clear and powerful vision. This has since been rectified by curators, collectors, and art historians.

Her color linocuts were included with other Grosvenor School artists in the First Exhibition of British Linocuts at the Redfern Gallery, London in July 1929 and were included in numerous exhibitions at the Redfern Gallery through 1936. In 1931, her work was represented in the Twelfth International Print Makers Exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum in California; this being the first of five exhibitions with the Print Makers Society of California. Andrews was a noted modernist artist in England during the 1920s and 1930s.