Edith Simon - Moderation Be Damned

For thirty years Edith Simon mounted big festival shows under her own steam and often beneath provocative banners - 'Art is Alive and Well', 'Moderation be Damned', 'Who's Afraid of Edith Simon'.

She was, as one of her exhibition titles acknowledges, a maverick - her technical accomplishment - she worked with a bewildering range of materials from cloth to rope, to resins to paper - harnessed to severe clarical disciplines, made her formidable enough, but that is less than half the story.

As if daunting intelligence, and scholarship, natural draughtsmanship, a sure sense of form and colour, and insatiable artistic curiosity were not enough, she was also the author of nine novels and half a dozen books on history. She can accomplish too much, too damned well.

- abridged from an article by W. Gordon Smith. Friend, journalist and broadcaster.

Extract from 'Moderation Be Damned' catalogue.

The Observer article from 1989.

Website Notes from previous exhibition.