35 x 28 cm art print of Study for a colossal steel head by William McCance from the National Galleries of Scotland Collection.
This drawing – possibly a preparatory study for a sculpture – treats the human head in terms of finely polished machine parts, although there is also perhaps a nod towards monolithic sculpture from the Pre-Columbian era (pre-1492).
McCance was one of the very few Scottish artists in the 1920s and 1930s to respond positively to modernist art. He got to know Wyndham Lewis and other members of the former Vorticist group in London. He was decisively influenced by their machine aesthetic and openness to technological progress. He was one of very few Scottish artists to follow such a style.
William McCance (1894–1970) was a Scottish artist. Born in Glasgow and studied at Glasgow School of Art, he married a fellow student, Agnes Miller Parker (one of Britain's leading wood-engravers), and they moved to London two years later.
From 1930 to 1933 he worked as controller of the celebrated Gregynog Press in Wales, where leading British printmakers and typographers produced highly prized, limited-edition books.
