Hernan Bas: Cambridge Living, Victoria Miro Mayfair

Herman Bas brings his sunlit depictions of the secrecy, camaraderie and decadence of Cambridge life to Victoria Miro Mayfair this September.

Cambridge Living showcases the fruits of a year’s residency and research at the Jesus College, Cambridge. The paintings have all the spontaneity and eroticism of the beachside paintings of John Singer Sargent, or of Henry Scott Tuke, both currently on display at the Tate Britain. Bas captures the dynamism of the young bodies of university students, more often than not, engaged in various stages of hijinks (and undress), as they bend, row, swim, and stretch.

However, the artist’s immersion in life and study at the university shows itself in more than his impressionistic renderings of the waters of the Cam and and the punts. Bas also casts a sensuous light over Cambridge’s illicit history and its strange mix of wealth and transgression. The secretive ‘Night Climbers of Cambridge’ constitute a major inspiration. Rising to notoriety in the 1930s, this band of young men photographed themselves illegally scaling the spires and steeples of the medieval city – frequently wearing a coat and tails.

Bas immersed himself in the university’s botanical collection (many specimens of which are originals from Darwin’s expedition to the Galápagos Islands), to explore the colouring techniques used to create the medieval manuscripts of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Cambridge Living draws together a rich and multilayered ferment of influences, and promises to be a fascinating insight into the process and experimentation of one of the art world’s most renowned painters.