Austin Osman Spare

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Austin Osman Spare
Spare in 1904
Born	(1886-12-30)30 December 1886 London, England
Died	15 May 1956(1956-05-15) (aged 69) London, England
Education	Royal College of Art
Known for	Drawing, painting, occultism
Movement	Symbolism, proto-surrealism
Patron(s)	Lord Howard de Walden, Charles Ricketts, Marc-André Raffalovich, John Gray, Aleister Crowley
Website	Austin Osman Spare – Art UK

Austin Osman Spare (30 December 1886 – 15 May 1956) was an English artist and occultist^[1] who worked as both a draughtsman and a painter. Influenced by symbolism and Art Nouveau, his art was known for its clear use of line,^[2] and its depiction of monstrous and sexual imagery.^[3] In an occult capacity, he developed magical techniques including automatic writing, automatic drawing and sigilization based on his theories of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious self.

Born into a working-class family in Snow Hill in London, Spare grew up in Smithfield and then Kennington, taking an early interest in art. Gaining a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington, he trained as a draughtsman, while also taking a personal interest in Theosophy and Western esotericism, becoming briefly involved with Aleister Crowley and his A∴A∴. Developing his own personal occult philosophy, he wrote a series of occult grimoires, namely Earth Inferno (1905), The Book of Pleasure (1913) and The Focus of Life (1921). Alongside a string of personal exhibitions, he also achieved much press attention for being the youngest entrant at the 1904 Royal Academy summer exhibition.

After publishing a short-lived art magazine, Form, during the First World War he was conscripted into the armed forces and worked as an official war artist. Spare attempted to revive Form after the war before shifting his efforts to The Golden Hind, in partnership with Clifford Bax. Moving to various working class areas of South London over the following decades, Spare lived in poverty, but continued exhibiting his work to varying degrees of success. With the arrival of surrealism onto the London art scene during the 1930s, critics and the press once more took an interest in his work, seeing it as an early precursor to surrealist imagery. Losing his home during the Blitz, he fell into relative obscurity following the Second World War, although he continued exhibiting till his death in 1956.

Spare's spiritualist legacy was largely maintained by his friend, the Thelemite author Kenneth Grant in the latter part of the 20th century, and his beliefs regarding sigils provided a key influence on the chaos magic movement and Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. Spare's art once more began to receive attention in the 1970s, due to a renewed interest in Art Nouveau in Britain, with several retrospective exhibitions being held in London.