Ronda, Spain

In February 1954, still largely ignored by the British art establishment, Bomberg and his second wife, the painter Lilian Holt, left England and returned to Ronda, where they planned to establish a painting school in the Villa Paz in the old town. After the scheme foundered, Bomberg returned to his own work producing expressive landscapes of Ronda, in both charcoal and in vigorously handled paintings drawing direct inspiration from the rugged, mountainous terrain of Spanish Andalusia. As one reviewer later noted, ‘It is an open question whether Bomberg was drawn to savage mountain country by spiritual impulse or simply because it suited his style of painting’.