Beryl Cook
Tango Busking, 1997
£950
A lifetime, limited edition silkscreen print, signed and numbered by the artist.
Dimensions
64 x 61.5 cm
Finishing
Screenprint on paper
Artist's Proof, signed and numbered 48 of 70 by the artist
Courtesy the artist's estate
About The Artwork
Inspired by a trip to Argentina, Beryl Cook made several paintings of couples dancing the tango in bars and on the street. This particular scene takes place in San Telmo, one of the oldest barrios in Buenos Aires. According to Cook, the streets in San Telmo were "full of pavement cafes, and in front of nearly every one a group of tango experts performed for the general entertainment. We found these four in a side street just as we were leaving, so we stopped to have a last look."
About Beryl Cook
Beryl Cook (1926–2008) was one of Britain’s best-loved artists. A self-taught painter, Cook is renowned for her exuberant style and explorations of English cultural identity and everyday life. Portrayed with defiance, her work can be understood as engaging with ideas around ‘female camp’, class and pleasure. Additionally, they can be contextualised within contemporary body positivity movements. Her larger-sized, usually jovial characters celebrate bigger bodies and inclusivity.
Cook's most celebrated and enduring images are of larger-than-life women carousing in nightclubs, eating in cafés or enjoying ribald hen parties. Though the women in Cook’s works embody comedic or bawdy qualities, they command the space of her paintings in complex, vivid and entirely believable portraits that draw from keenly observed social interactions.
Today, her works are held in the collections of the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, the Bristol City Museum of Art Gallery, and the Plymouth City Art Gallery, among others. The artist has received retrospective exhibitions at Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2007); Plymouth City Art Gallery, Plymouth (2017); and A.H.F.T.A.W, New York (2022).