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Peter Lanyon | |
|---|---|
| Born | George Peter Lanyon (1918-02-08)8 February 1918 |
| Died | 31 August 1964(1964-08-31) (aged 46) |
| Known for | Painting |
| Movement | Modernism,abstract art |
George Peter Lanyon (8 February 1918 – 31 August 1964) was a British painter[1] of landscapes leaning heavily towardsabstraction. Lanyon was one of the most important artists to emerge in post-war Britain. Despite his early death at the age of forty-six he achieved a body of work that is amongst the most original and important reappraisals of modernism in painting to be found anywhere. Combining abstract values with radical ideas about landscape and the figure, Lanyon navigated a course fromConstructivism throughAbstract Expressionism to a style close to Pop. He also made constructions, pottery andcollage.
Lanyon took up gliding as a pastime and used the resulting experience extensively in his paintings. He died inTaunton,Somerset, as the result of injuries received in a gliding accident and is buried inSt. Uny's Church, Lelant.
In September 2010 Peter Lanyon’s work was honoured with a large-scale retrospective exhibition:Peter Lanyon 9 October 2010 – 23 January 2011 atTate St Ives. Curated by Chris Stephens, Head of Displays and Curator of Modern British Art atTate Britain, it was the first thorough museum retrospective for almost forty years. In 2015 Lanyon's Gliding Paintings were shown as a set in theSoaring Flight exhibition at theCourtauld Gallery, London.
In 2018 the catalogue raisonné of Peter’s oil paintings and three-dimensional works was published by Modern Art Press, after a decades work by Toby Treves.
Peter Lanyon was born inSt Ives, Cornwall, in 1918. He was the only son of W H Lanyon, an amateur photographer and musician. He was educated atClifton College.[2] St Ives remained his base and he received after-school painting lessons fromBorlase Smart. In 1937 he metAdrian Stokes who is thought to have introduced him to contemporary painting and sculpture and who advised him to go to theEuston Road School where he studied for four months underVictor Pasmore. In 1936–37 he also attendedPenzance School of Art. In 1939 he met established artistsBen Nicholson,Barbara Hepworth andNaum Gabo who had moved to St Ives on the outbreak of the Second World War. Lanyon received private art tuition from Nicholson. The character of his work changed completely and he became very involved with making constructions. Throughout the 1940s the influence of Nicholson and Gabo remained very evident in his work. From 1940 to 1945 he served with theRoyal Air Force in the Western Desert,Palestine and Italy.
In 1946 he married Sheila St John Browne (1918/19 – 18 November 2015).[3] Their first child, Andrew Lanyon, was born in 1947. Six children were born to the couple between 1947 and 1957; Andrew, Jane, Matthew, Martin, Anna and Jo. The same year he became an active member of the Crypt Group of Artists and was a founder member of thePenwith Society of Arts in 1949. He travelled around Italy with his wife Sheila in the summer of 1950 and became a leading figure in theSt. Ives group of artists.
He had his first solo exhibition at theLefevre Gallery, London in 1949 and taught at theBath Academy of Art,Corsham from 1951 to 1957 (whereWilliam Scott was senior painting tutor). In 1950 he was invited by theArts Council to contribute to their exhibition at theFestival of Britain. Lanyon held his first exhibition atGimpel Fils in 1952 and the gallery went onto represent him throughout his life.[4] In 1953 he spent four months living in Italy on an Italian government scholarship. In 1954 he was awarded the Critics' Prize by the British section of the International Association of Art Critics. He ran an art school, St Peter's Loft, at St Ives from 1957 to 1960 withTerry Frost andWilliam Redgrave and in 1959 he was awarded second prize at the secondJohn Moores Exhibition in Liverpool.
Lanyon's first New York show was held at the Passedoit Gallery in 1953. After American collectorStanley Seeger introduced Lanyon to Catherine Viviano, he had his first solo New York show at the Catherine Viviano Gallery in 1957. On the 1957 trip to New York, he metJoseph Glasco who became a friend and later helped Lanyon work with Viviano.[5] He also metMark Rothko,Robert Motherwell and other artists, critics and collectors. Rothko's work particularly thrilled him. Lanyon was well received in New York and the increased demand for his work in the US combined with an expansion of work to the much larger scale of mural painting and in response to a new interest in gliding led to a looser and more open kind of painting.
Lanyon began training as a glider pilot in 1959, hoping "to get a more complete knowledge of the landscape". He used hisgliding experiences as the basis for paintings which gave an aerial perspective to his native Cornish landscape until his death in a gliding accident in 1964.
In 1961 he was elected Chairman of the Newlyn Society of Artists and was elected a Bard of theGorseth Kernow, with thebardic nameMarghak an Gwyns (Rider of the Winds)[6] for services to Cornish art. In 1962 he spent seven months painting a mural commissioned for the house ofStanley J Seeger in New Jersey, USA. The following year he spent three months as a visiting painter at the San Antonio Art Institute in Texas, as well as visiting Mexico. He travelled to Prague and Bratislava in 1964 to lecture for theBritish Council.
Lanyon died on 31 August 1964 atTaunton,Somerset, after a gliding accident.
