Anthropomorphic Landscape

This work arose from Maddox’s association with the mystico-religious ‘Apocalyptic Movement’, which had been founded by Henry Treece, G.S. Fraser and J.F. Hendry in 1938 and had published its first anthology, The New Apocalypse, in 1939. The ‘vision’ that Maddox encountered was one of dejection and inevitable catastrophe. In his article ‘The Apocalyptic Element in Conroy Maddox’ (1942), Hendry pointed to the ‘elemental forces’ expressed in Maddox’s work. Anthropomorphic Landscape, in particular, he continued, amounted to ‘the act of creation itself, the human frame springing from the earth under the beneficent influence of a force’. When Maddox was commissioned to make six illustrations for Stefan Schimanski’s ‘apocalyptic’ book Knight and Devil (1942), he reprised Anthropomorphic Landscape in the drawing The Well. At a time when war was looming and then beginning, Maddox’s work was increasingly dominated by hideous landscapes metamorphosing into grotesque limbs and menacing figures, often disgorging their internal organs. The mood is one of anguish, impending doom and cataclysm.

We are very grateful to Silvano Levy for preparing this catalogue entry.

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