Air Raid by Cyril Power, linocut

Power’s linocut print of a biplane ‘dog fight’ recalls his First World War service in the Royal Flying Corps, when he supervised aircraft repairs at Lympne aerodrome, Kent. He developed the print in four lino-block colour separations of red, light blue, grey and dark blue from a wartime sketch.

Formerly an architect, after his service Power retrained as an artist at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art where his tutor Claude Flight led a modernist movement in linocut printing. Vorticism and Futurism were influential to the group’s celebration of speed in the machine age. Impressions of Air Raid were first sold at the Redfern Gallery in the exhibition 'Colour Prints' (25 June to 18 July 1936, cat. no. 15). This is an untitled, unnumbered artist's proof, signed not in the lower margin of the paper but singularly within the print. It is one of two impressions of Power's Air Raid in the RAF Museum Collection. Purchased from the Parkin Gallery, 1978. Artist copyright: expired / RAF Museum.