Noble floor at Palazzo Ducale

Man at Work: A Century of Technical and Social Progress, 1961 is one of the most significant works by the British artist Barbara Jones. This monumental panel was commissioned by the Central Office of Information (the communications and marketing agency of the United Kingdom government) for the International Labour Exhibition in Turin, which in 1961 celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Unification of Italy.

In the outline of the gigantic head, represented by Jones, scenes and objects appear evoking the theme of work, technological innovation and social change, together with the others completely unrelated to the subject: a tiger on a crocodile, a coffin, a skeleton, an owl. The representations of a propagandistic-monumental origin are amalgamated with the artist’s personal creative imagination. This complex painting, composed of sophisticated superimpositions of meanings, reveals surrealist allusions widespread in the visual culture of Great Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. The work was exhibited in the Palazzo del Lavoro, designed for the Expo by the engineer Pier Luigi Nervi and the architect Gio Ponti, two major figures of the Italian and international architecture of the twentieth century.

The artist was most proud of this work, and she went to considerable lengths and expense to buy it back and to return it to her studio, where it remained until recently. Now the painting has returned to Italy thanks to the long-term loan, stipulated between The RAW – Rediscovering Art by Women and Palazzo Ducale – Fondazione per la Cultura, thanks to the collaboration of Paul and Eva Liss and Mitchell Wolfson Jr.

Barbara Mildred Jones (Croydon, Surrey 1912 – London, United Kingdom 1978), painter, designer, illustrator, writer and exhibition curator, trained at the Royal College of Art in London (1933-1936), studying mural painting with Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and Charles Mahoney. During the years of the Second World War she was involved in the project Recording Britain, conceived by the art historian Kenneth Clark and promoted by the Pilgrim Trust. During her career she created several mural paintings in the United Kingdom and abroad, decorations for the interiors of ocean liners and numerous graphic works. She was the author of books on the history of art and design, which she also illustrated (Unsophisticated Arts, London, The Architectural Press, 1951; Follies and Grottoes, London, Constable, 1953). In 1951 she curated the exhibition Black Eyes and Lemonade at the Whitechapel Gallery, which marked the beginning of Pop Art.

Thanks to the RAW – Rediscovering Art by Women, a collection of paintings and sculptures by 20th-century women artists has been assembled over the past 30 years. Works from this collection have been lent to museums and galleries worldwide. Focusing on the forgotten and underappreciated women artists, the collection documents examples of the way in which women contributed to the 20th century’s major international movements, with a special focus on surrealism.

Man at Work: A Century of Technical and Social Progress, 1961
Oil on plywood
Permanent loan from RAW – Rediscovering Art by Women, London to Palazzo Ducale – Fondazione per la Cultura, Genoa