Ione Robinson (American, 1910-1989), Children during bombardment - London '45 (A Sketch)

Pencil on paper, 1945, signed and inscribed at lower left, retaining gallery label to verso with erroneous artist name, matted and framed under glass.

Sight size 14 1/4 x 12 1/4 in.; Frame dimensions 20 3/4 x 18 1/4 in.

From the Collection of Kayvon North, Raleigh, North Carolina

TEW Galleries, Atlanta, Georgia
Acquired from the above

Ione Robinson was an artist, writer, and illustrator whose career brought her into contact with many leading figures of twentieth-century art and politics. After studying at the Otis Art Institute and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, she traveled to Mexico, where she became associated with the Mexican muralist movement and worked alongside Diego Rivera, moving within a circle that included Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1931 to continue her work in Mexico.

In 1938, while traveling to document the Spanish Civil War, Robinson met Winston Churchill in London. Churchill warned her of the approaching war and urged her to return to America, though she continued on to Barcelona and the Ebro front, documenting the effects of the conflict. Her experiences abroad later informed her 1946 memoir, A Wall to Paint On. The Museum of Modern Art in New York holds two drawings by Robinson, including the wartime sketch London Boy, “Bombardment” (1945), which resonates with Churchill’s earlier warning of the coming war.

Soft creasing to top edge of sheet; overall in good estate condition; not examined out of the frame.