London-based artist Harry Rüdham (b. 1996) graduated with a First in BA Fine Art in 2019 from Central Saint Martins, where his studies also included a year at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. His distinctive style fuses the classical motif of the reclining figure with a strikingly abstract approach.

Inspired by the colour studies of Bauhaus artists, Rüdham transposes their theories into a contemporary context. Floating, reclining or falling figures are silhouetted and often repeated across brightly textured canvases. The paintings form a stylised observation of contemporary life, but while the genesis of each painting is an oil pastel sketch of a scene or moment, they are more than simple snapshots of the cities where the artist has lived. Interested in the relationship between the city and rest; the figures of people he has met are abstracted, dragged and dropped into chromatic paintings that suggest the chaotic nature of contemporary life that leaves no time for reflection, rest or recuperation.

Rüdham’s work has featured in numerous group exhibitions in the UK and Germany including the Venco Gallery Edition iii Exhibition, Berlin (2018) and Young Contemporaries, London (2019) which he also curated. In 2020 Rüdham was the subject of a solo online exhibition with Julia Campbell Carter and he initiated the residency, ‘Sit Down, Have a Corona’ in order to support artists during the global pandemic.