(David) Gwyther (Broome) Irwin (7 May 1931 – 18 October 2008) was a British abstract artist born in

Basingstoke Basingstoke ( ) is the largest town in the county of Hampshire. It is situated in south-central England and lies across a valley at the source of the River Loddon, at the far western edge of The North Downs. It is located north-east of Southa ...

, Hampshire, who had lived much of his life in north Cornwall. He was educated in Dorset, at Goldsmiths College and at the Central School of Art in London 1951–1954. Irwin first came to prominence in 1957 with an exhibition at Gallery One, and another at Gimpel Fils in 1959. In 1964, he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, along with Joe Tilson,

Bernard Meadows Bernard Meadows (19 February 1915 - 12 January 2005) was a British modernist sculptor. Meadows was Henry Moore's first assistant; then part of the Geometry of Fear school, a loose-knit group of British sculptors whose prominence was establishe ...

and Roger Hilton. In 1960, he married Elizabeth Gowlett and they had two sons and one daughter. His most famous artworks consisted of pictures assembled from newsprint and fragments of advertisements on paper, which he collected from the streets with his wife, and which were then worked up into

collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...

s often of fine delicacy and quite subtle shades. Some of his later works also used string, wood shavings, chalk and paint. "Gwyther Irwin's latest collages...are evidently miracles of patient assembly...they set out to achieve the subtlest and slowest possible shifts in tonality from umber darkness to creamy light and back again. The patience, the subtlety, the muted gradations of every effect combine to produce an atmosphere of studied beauty." (The Times, 18 September 1959) In the 1960s he taught at art schools in Hornsey, Corsham and Chelsea before becoming head of fine art at

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

polytechnic between 1969 and 1984.

Exhibitions

*Gallery One, 1957 *Redfern Gallery,

Metavisual Tachiste Abstract Metavisual Tachiste Abstract was a pivotal exhibition mounted by the Redfern Gallery, London in 1957. Subtitled 'Painting in England Today', Metavisual Tachiste Abstract ran from 4 April 1957 - 4 May 1957 . The exhibition was composed almost excl ...

, 1957 * Institute of Contemporary Arts, "Three Collagists," 1958 *Gimpel Fils, 1959 *Situation, London, 1960 *Paris Biennale, 1960 *Biennale des Jeunes, Paris, 1961 *The Art of Assemblage, MoMA, New York, 1961 *Gimpel Fils, 1962 *Gimpel Fils, 1963, * Venice Biennale, 1964 *Recent British Painting, Tate Gallery, London, 1967 *Two one-man exhibitions in 1975 & 1978 *Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 1981 *Retrospective, Gimpel Fils, 1987 *John Jones Gallery, 1992 *Barbican Art Gallery, 1993 * Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro, 1995 *West of England Academy, Bristol, 1996 *Tate Britain, 2004 *Redfern Gallery & JHW Fine Art, London, 2006 *Lemon Street Gallery, Truro, scheduled for February 2009 will now become a memorial tribute.

Bibliography

* Gwyther Irwin, ''Collage,'' Gimpel Fils, London, 1962, ASIN B0007KED1A * Alan Bowness, ''Gwyther Irwin,'' Quadrum Books, Bruxelles, 1964, ASIN B0007KELU8 * ''Roger Hilton, Gwyther Irwin, Bernard Meadows, Joe Tilson, An exhibition catalogue,'' with illustrations, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1965 * ''Gwyther Irwin: work in progress 1957-1967,'' xhibition5–30 September 1967, Gimpel Fils, London, 1967, ASIN B0007JX2NQ * ''Gwyther Irwin, 7 April to 2 May 1970,'' Gimpel Fils, London, 1970 * Nicholas Wadley, ''Gwyther Irwin a Retrospective,'' London, Gimpel Fils. 1987 * Gwyther Irwin, ''Recent Paintings, 15 February-17 March 1994,'' Redfern Gallery, London, 1994

External links

Gwyther Irwin at JHW fine artsGwyther Irwin at Tate modern''Gwyther Irwin: painter whose art drew his Cornish upbringing (Obituary),'' The Times, 25 October 2008
{{DEFAULTSORT:Irwin, Gwyther 1931 births 2008 deaths Artists from Hampshire Academics of the University of Brighton Collage artists People from Basingstoke Alumni of the Central School of Art and Design

Exhibitions

Bibliography

See also

External links