THE BOSNIAN PRINTS OF BERNARD RICE

The art collection of the Heritage Museum of Travnik holds a collection of 24 print sheets by British artist Bernard Rice. The woodcuts arrived in Museum from London, as a gift by Aleksandra Saša Marinkov, who looks after the legacy of this artist.

The prints were shown in the Terra gallery in Travnik in 1999, within cooperation between the Heritage Museum of Travnik and Marian Wenzel, PhD, manager of the BHHR office in Sarajevo (it is a charity society Bosnia-Herzegovina Heritage Rescue – BHHR, which was founded by Marian Wenzel, PhD, a British artist and art historian who chose medieval art of Bosnia: decorative motifs on stećaks (Bosnian medieval tombstones), jewelry and art objects made of metal as a subject of research).

The collection consists of woodcuts which belong to thematic cycle The Bosnian Prints, created during the artist's stay in Travnik from 1922 to 1926. They were printed on Japanese paper after Rice returned to London in 1927.

“The Bosnian Prints” aroused a great attention and favorable responses in British artistic circles of the time. It was the first time that British art audiences got the opportunity to learn about a distant Balkan country Bosnia and Herzegovina, where life in villages proceeded in a way almost identical to that in the Middle Ages. The prints presented traditional architecture, small wooden huts, people in folk costumes during daily jobs they performed in harsh conditions of the cold Bosnian winter.

In the foreword to the exhibition in Travnik of 1999, Marian Wenzel, PhD, wrote the following: Bernard Rice has remained unique in the representation od lyricism of Bosnian country. His manuscripts are becoming valuable documents of the lost landscape of a devastated country.

Bernard Rice came to Bosnia at the invitation of a friend, Miss Dickinson, who managed a school for poor children in Travnik, which in turn included a workshop of designed furniture. Through schooling and practice, the children were made capable of independent work. The furniture was delivered to England and some custom-made items even to the royal court in Belgrade. According to Marian Wenzel, PhD, after designs of Bernard Rice, this workshop made the chair for the chairman of the League of Nations. On the order of Pole Artur Burda, who lived in Banja Luka, furniture for the bedroom was designed, fully assembled without using nails, in the manner of folk hand-made furniture, as attested by professor Sabira Husedžinović.

According to Rice's life partner Flora Harvey, during the day he used to make sketches for furniture, teach at the school, make parts of the furniture with students, and later in the day he would work on his woodcuts.

Most woodcuts were made in Travnik, although several of them are entitled Vlasenica. Interestingly, neither testimonies of Rice's contemporaries nor his biography include data that he spent a long time in Vlasenica. It is possible that prints with these titles were made according to sketches from travels; however, we believe that it is still a mistake. Actually, it is possible that prints with this title do not pertain to Vlasenica but to the Vilenica, a mountain near Travnik. The reason for this assumption is not that representation of mountain motifs with wooden huts covered with snow which appear on these prints and are typical of the mountainous area of Travnik, but is rather based on the information which I once obtained from a painter from Dubrovnik, Ljubomir Kolovrat, born in Bugojno in 1911. At the time of the artist's stay in Travnik, he attended Archiepiscopal Jesuit High School in this town. He remembered Bernard Rice well, and said that he lived in a wooden hut on the Vilenica. He would see him every day coming down to the town and passing by the high school.  

Bernard Rice had an unusual life path. He spent his early youth in native Innsbruck (Austria), where he attended School of Arts (1915-1918). At the same time, he helped out in the family workshop in making and processing stained glass, which was the occupation of his grandfather and father, whose first names were also Bernard. His family soon moved to London and Rice enrolled in the Westminster School of Art (1919-1920), and then studied at the Royal Academy Schools (1921-1922).

He lived in Travnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, from 1922 to 1926, when he returned to London to complete the last year of studies at the Royal College of Art. He returned to Travnik in 1929, and then went to Cairo (Egypt), where he remained until 1949. He got a job at the General Motors company, where e designed and made posters. At the Cairo-based school of fine arts (Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts) he founds the department of printmaking and as a professor had a strong influence on the development of modern Egyptian art. A book by art critic Yasser Mongy, PhD, published in Cairo in 2012, analyzes the influence of Bernard Rice on the first generation of Egyptian printmakers, reviews his educational and artistic work, as well as his activities on restoration of Old Egyptian artefacts. The author also studies Rice's political activity, particularly conflicts with Nazi agents as well as with Trotskyist followers during the Second World War. 

In the period from 1949 to 1952, Rice taught at the Sir John Cass School in London, and became a member of the Society of Printmakers. He lived in Chelsea, where people remembered him as a remarkable artist on the bicycle, who always looked thirty years younger.

He was well-known as one of the most outstanding printmakers of British school. He stood out as an atypical artist of the school, both by his motifs and by the manner of technical processing and the use of woodcutting technique. He particularly experimented in the cycle “The Bosnian Prints”, where he used the soft linden wood as the template, which had not been utilized in the practice of British printmaking school, which rather used hard wood such as boxwood. He liked experimenting and wanted to highlight the property of the material he worked with.

He attracted a great attention with his “Bosnian Prints”, which present a distinctive, genuine world in its primordial originality, now preserved only in traces. His prints drew attention of the cultural heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina. His neutral view of a foreigner who knew people well and understood the way of living and circumstances in Bosnia in the 1930s pointed out its rustic beauty and its values, like a medieval-Oriental view of Travnik, which he so accurately and committedly recorded on his printmaking wooden plate in 1925. 

He nourished expressive creations, sometimes with a pronounced influence of Art Deco, particularly on representations of portraits of men and women with ethnographic elements, which reveal his skill of reducing the form to purified geometric structures.

During his stay in Egypt, he made portraits, and also began to use color. Besides printmaking, he used other painting techniques. Upon his return to London he focused on abstraction. He taught printmaking at Sir John Cass School. He actively worked until his death in 1998. His works are held in Victoria and Albert Museum, British Museum, Museum of Modern Art Cairo, Heritage Museum of Travnik and in private collections.

A years-long friend of Rice Diana Newman once wrote that Bernard Rice would be happy to see his works permanently exhibited in Travnik, where they had been created.

P. S. Besides, it seems useful to be reminded that Miss Dickinson founded one of the best vocational schools in Travnik, which was attended by poor and homeless children free of charge. The school was situated near the Monastery of the Sisters of Mercy, behind former building of jail in Travnik. A tennis court was built next to the workshop. Miss Dickinson was also involved in cultural exchange between the two countries, and thus organized an exhibition of a contemporary artists, painter Muhamed Kulenović from Travnik in London. Unfortunately, the paintings got lost on the way to Belgrade. Miss Dickinson's sister, Lady Bery, a doctor, alpinist and world traveler on the bicycle, was also interested in peoples of the Balkans and in the 1930s spent a part of her life in Serbia, being involved in charity work.

References and sources:

• Blond, Jonathan and Wenzel, Marian, “Bernard Rice The Bosnian Prints”, The Catalogue, London, 1996.

• Mongy, Yasser (2012), Bernard Rice, The Unknown Father of Egyptian Printmaking, British Council, Cairo

• Archives, Art Collection of the Heritage Museum of Travnik, a letter of Flora Harvey.

• Archives, Art Collection of the Heritage Museum of Travnik, a letter of Diana Newman.

• Simon Breet, “Bernard Rice: The Bosnian Prints”, Blond Fine Art, London 10. 11.-15. 12. 1996, Magazine Multiples London,1997.

• Stephen Bartley, Chenil Art Gallery, London 1980.