Quick on the draw

The late film critic Alexander Walker is behind this exhibition. For when Avigdor Arikha saw one of his own works in a display of prints Walker had donated, he decided to make his own gift to the British Museum and gave a substantial body of his prints and drawings.

As it had been easy to overlook Arikha's more modest, figurative work among the bigger names in the Walker display, it's interesting to see just how wide his range is in the print medium with this solo exhibition.

Made up of drawings and prints executed in the past 40 years, the exhibition includes portraits, still lifes and nudes, subjects the Paris-based artist has devoted himself to since turning his back on what, in his view, are the sterile limitations of abstract art. Arikha has drawn and etched portraits of literary luminaries, such as Samuel Beckett, as well as the art critic David Sylvester.

A drawing of the former is a series of angular lines lightly delineated, while the latter's hound-like, brooding presence is captured particularly well in a dense and inky etching. But the portraits aren't nearly as compelling as the series of dark and smudgy etchings of ordinary objects - hats, the handle of a walking cane, a coat that might be a strange kind of mask until closer viewing reveals it. Arikha executes each picture at one quick sitting, but these quiet, velvety still lifes have a slow, intense quality.

From Life: Avigdor Arikha Drawings And Prints 1965-2005
British Museum
Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, WC1B 3DG