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Jeffrey Steele (1931–2021) was an
abstract painter. In Paris (1959) he encountered the work of artists working in the mode of
geometric abstraction
Geometric abstraction is a form of abstract art based on the use of geometric forms sometimes, though not always, placed in non-illusionistic space and combined into non-objective (non-representational) compositions. Although the genre was popu ...
, such as
Victor Vasarely
Victor Vasarely (; born Győző Vásárhelyi, ; 9 April 1906 – 15 March 1997) was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader of the Op art movement.
His work entitled ''Zebra'', created in 1937, is consid ...
(1906–97),
Max Bill
Max Bill (22 December 1908 – 9 December 1994) was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer.
Early life and education
Bill was born in Winterthur. After an apprenticeship as a silversmith ...
(1908–94) and
Josef Albers
Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College, ...
(1888–1976), and adopted a lifelong abstract approach. For eight years he worked purely in black and white and was identified with the
Op-art
Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions.
Op artworks are abstract, with many better-known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images ...
movement. He incorporated other colours into his work in the 1970s.
His work has been exhibited in London, Paris, New York, Milan, the
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
(1986), and elsewhere in Europe and the Americas. He has participated in more than 100 group exhibitions and had 17 one-man shows, the first at the
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...
in London in 1961. His works are in a number of public collections in the UK, including
Tate Britain
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...
, the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
, the
Victoria & Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
, the
National Museum of Wales
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, ce ...
in Cardiff,
Walker Art Gallery
The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group.
History of the Gallery
The Walker Art Gallery's collection ...
in Liverpool, the
Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge. It is located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge. It was founded in 1816 under the will of Richard FitzWilliam, 7th Vis ...
in Cambridge, the
Arts Council and the
Department of the Environment
An environmental ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for the environment and/or natural resources. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of the Environment, ...
, and in other countries. Steele's painting ''Gespenstische Gestalt'' (1961–62) was shown in the exhibition "Dynamo, Un Siècle de Lumière et de Mouvement dans l'Art 1913/2013" at the
Grand Palais
The Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées ( en, Great Palace of the Elysian Fields), commonly known as the Grand Palais (English: Great Palace), is a historic site, exhibition hall and museum complex located at the Champs-Élysées in the 8th arro ...
in Paris in 2013.
After he had gained a reputation as a practising artist in the early 1960s Steele was accepted by the college authorities with which he had previously tussled and he began lecturing in fine art in Cardiff,
Barry Barry may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Barry (name), including lists of people with the given name, nickname or surname, as well as fictional characters with the given name
* Dancing Barry, stage name of Barry Richards (born c. 19 ...
and Newport. He then lectured at
Portsmouth Polytechnic
The University of Portsmouth is a public university in Portsmouth, England. It is one of only four universities in the South East England, South East of England rated as Gold in the Government's Teaching Excellence Framework. With approximately 28 ...
from May 1968 until December 1989.
He was a member of the
Portsmouth Sinfonia
The Portsmouth Sinfonia was an English orchestra founded by a group of students at the Portsmouth School of Art in 1970. The Sinfonia was generally open to anyone and ended up drawing players who were either people without musical training or, i ...
experimental orchestra organised by
Gavin Bryars
Richard Gavin Bryars (; born 16 January 1943) is an English composer and double bassist. He has worked in jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, avant-garde, and experimental music.
Early life and career
Born on 16 January 1943 in ...
for BA students and staff in Fine Art at Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1970, playing trombone.
[ He can be heard on the BA show invitation 45rpm of the William Tell Overture.
]
Early life to 1960
Jeffrey Steele was born on 3 July 1931 in Cardiff
Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...
, the son of a slate fireplace enameller, Arthur, and Enid (née Washer), who worked in a Woolworth's
Woolworth, Woolworth's, or Woolworths may refer to:
Businesses
* F. W. Woolworth Company, the original US-based chain of "five and dime" (5¢ and 10¢) stores
* Woolworths Group (United Kingdom), former operator of the Woolworths chain of shops ...
store. He attended Howard Gardens High School in Cardiff, where his teachers encouraged his artistic work.[
In 1948 Steele enrolled at Cardiff School of Art with a scholarship. After quarrels with the teaching staff he transferred to ]Newport School of Art
The University of Wales, Newport ( cy, Prifysgol Cymru, Casnewydd), was a university based in Newport, South Wales, before the merger that formed the University of South Wales in April 2013. The university had two campuses in Newport, Caerleon ...
, but he did not complete the course there.
As a pacifist
Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...
, he was a conscientious objector
A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to object ...
to National Service
National service is the system of voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939.
The l ...
; he was originally exempted only from combatant military service, but on appeal he was exempted from any military service, conditional upon performing civilian work. His refusal to undertake National Service led to him being forced out of the family home.
During the 1950s he maintained a studio in Cardiff and experimented with representational styles.
During the 1950s Steele worked figuratively while being employed as a Rediffusion
Rediffusion was a business that distributed radio and TV signals through wired relay networks. The business gave rise to a number of other companies, including Associated-Rediffusion, later known as Rediffusion London, the first ITV ( commer ...
radio technician and also engaging in a programme of self-education in European languages and philosophy, as well as art. He was particularly influenced by the allegorical style of Stanley Spencer
Sir Stanley Spencer, CBE RA (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959) was an English painter. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the small ...
(1891–1959). Steele's painting ''Christ Carrying the Cross'' (1952-3, set in Adamsdown, Cardiff) was shown at the Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
in London in summer 1953 and caused controversy in his home town because of its satirical message. Steele took a studio and later a flat in High Street, Cardiff, which became a meeting point for his artistic and intellectual contemporaries in the city. He also lived in London in 1956–57, working as a storeman at the Stoll Theatre Stoll is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Barbara J. Stoll, American pediatrician and professor
* Cal Stoll, American football coach
* Caspar Stoll, entomologist
* Clifford Stoll, American astronomer
* David Stoll, American a ...
until its demolition.
Steele had been studying Cézanne, Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
and the Abstract Expressionists
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...
but said later: "I mistrusted the deliberate bypassing of the thinking part of the mind which gestural painting entails and some love of the philosophical method of Descartes predisposed me towards a rational and austere form."[Quoted in Gloria Carnevali's essay for the exhibition catalogue for "Jeffrey Steele 1960–1990", at the Clare Hall Gallery, Cambridge, October 1992.]
In 1959 he won a French government scholarship to study in Paris, initially for three months. There he visited the show "Antagonismes" at the musée des Arts décoratifs, and saw the work of Auguste Herbin
Auguste Herbin (29 April 1882 – 31 January 1960) was a French Painting, painter of modern art. He is best known for his Cubism, Cubist and abstract art, abstract paintings consisting of colorful Geometry, geometric figures. He co-founded the gr ...
(1882–1960), Max Bill, Richard Paul Lohse
Richard Paul Lohse (September 13, 1902 – September 16, 1988) was a Swiss painter and graphic artist and one of the main representatives of the concrete and constructive art movements.
Lohse was born in Zürich in 1902. His wish to study in Pa ...
(1902–1988), the Venezuelan Jesús Rafael Soto
Jesús Rafael Soto (June 5, 1923 – January 17, 2005) was a Venezuelan op and kinetic artist, a sculptor and a painter.
His works can be found in the collections of the main museums of the world, including Tate (London), Museum Ludwig (Germany ...
(1923–2005) and, especially influential for Steele, Victor Vasarely
Victor Vasarely (; born Győző Vásárhelyi, ; 9 April 1906 – 15 March 1997) was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader of the Op art movement.
His work entitled ''Zebra'', created in 1937, is consid ...
.[ He determined to start afresh and when he returned to Cardiff he destroyed all figurative work in his possession.
He started with what could not be eliminated while still being an artist making pictures: the two essentials, first a blank white (when primed) canvas, and second, an element (or elements) of black, these two (figure and ground) interacting with each other. From this simplest possible binary situation he built up a new practice, beginning with depictions of ovoid forms.
]
Principles and aims
Each work is underlaid by its own set of mathematic relationships that, once chosen intuitively, determines the elements depicted to produce a unified, harmonious whole, which is independent of any outside object (as in figurative art) or the artist's emotions (as in Abstract Expressionism). Typically, equal vertical and horizontal divisions of the canvas are cut through with intersecting diagonals, and new lines taken from intersections, to produce a system of superimposed grids or nets. On these are built the shapes, lines, curves, blocks of colour or spatial divisions that form the elements of the picture. The elements are repeated but subject to the effects of incremental changes according to logical progressions. They interact and interpenetrate to allow the viewer to make new, multiple connections and see new patterns. As in a half-tone
Halftone is the reprographic technique that simulates continuous-tone imagery through the use of dots, varying either in size or in spacing, thus generating a gradient-like effect.Campbell, Alastair. The Designer's Lexicon. ©2000 Chronicle, S ...
photograph, the image appears to be more meaningful than the elements that make it up. This effect, says the critic Gloria Carnevali, can be seen as forming "a new third dimension, one that exists between the painting and the observer", even a "new pictorial space".[ The use in Steele's work of elements in balanced opposition, and the tilted axes arising from the diagonals, produce symmetrical wholes that are not static but dynamic, complex and full of apparent movement, especially rotational, the eye eventually returning to its starting point before beginning a new journey around the picture.
While modern in their pure abstraction, purged of references to the world outside the picture, Steele's works, in their systems of proportion, balance and measurement, in their use of geometric forms (particularly circles and polygons such as triangles and squares), and in their strong contrasts of light and dark (]chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro ( , ; ), in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achi ...
) in their composition
Composition or Compositions may refer to:
Arts and literature
*Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography
*Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...
, are prefigured by much older art and architecture, and have a timeless quality.[Dr Alan Fowler, "The Systems Group and its Constructive Context", in the catalogue for "A Rational Aesthetic" at Southampton City Art Gallery in 2008.
]
Steele's aim is visual experimentation and investigation, to answer questions such as "what would that look like?", a journey in collaboration with the viewer on the basis of equal status. The result, while being potentially satisfying, interesting and appealing for a viewer, is not primarily intended to provide aesthetic pleasure and sensory enjoyment ("I like that"), or to elicit an emotionally sympathetic response or admiration for the artist's skill or insight ("That's good"), or to satisfy the art market. The artist is kept firmly in the background.
In a statement concerning his work Steele proposes "to abolish as far as possible subjective, contingent and random factors in favour of a principle of necessity; to develop a pictorial context conforming to this principle and to render this principle as intelligible as possible".
Op art in the 1960s
Steele's painting ''Baroque Experiment – Fred Maddox'' (1962/63) featured prominently in a ''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine article on Op-art, "Pictures that Attack the Eye", in October 1964. It was then shown in "The Responsive Eye
Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions.
Op artworks are abstract, with many better-known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images ...
", an exhibition of mainly Op-art in the Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York in February–April 1965, organised by William Seitz, which also included work by the British artists Michael Kidner
Michael James Kidner (11 September 1917 – 2009) was a British op artist. Active from mid-1960s, Kidner was an early exponent of the genre. Through his interest in mathematics, he was part of the Constructivism (art), Constructivism moveme ...
(1917–2009) and Bridget Riley
Bridget Louise Riley (born 24 April 1931) is an English painter known for her op art paintings. She lives and works in London, Cornwall and the Vaucluse in France.
Early life and education
Riley was born on 24 April 1931 in West Norwood, No ...
(1931–). Steele spent three weeks in the city, meeting critics and artists such as Josef Albers, Fritz Glarner
Fritz Glarner (July 20, 1899 in Zurich – September 18, 1972 in Locarno) was a Swiss-American painter.
Glarner was a leading proponent of so-called Concrete Art, an artists' movement whose roots lead back to the painters of De Stijl and ...
(1899–1972), Richard Huelsenbeck
Carl Wilhelm Richard Hülsenbeck (aka Charles R. Hulbeck) (23 April 189220 April 1974) was a German writer, poet, and psychoanalyst born in Frankenau, Hessen-Nassau who was associated with the formation of the Dada movement.
Life and work
Huelsen ...
(1892–1974), Ad Reinhardt
Adolph Dietrich Friedrich Reinhardt (December 24, 1913 – August 30, 1967) was an abstract painter active in New York for more than three decades. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) and part of the movement center ...
(1913–1967) and Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...
(1928–87), visiting galleries and staying in the Chelsea Hotel. He was interviewed by the film-maker Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma (born September 11, 1940) is an American film director and screenwriter. With a career spanning over 50 years, he is best known for his work in the suspense, crime and psychological thriller genres. De Palma was a leading ...
(1940–) for his documentary about the exhibition.
He has been identified with the Op-art movement because he has worked in black and white, especially in the 1960s, and his paintings feature clear, hard edges, sharp, even dazzling contrasts, figure-ground ambiguity and kinetic
Kinetic (Ancient Greek: κίνησις “kinesis”, movement or to move) may refer to:
* Kinetic theory of gases, Kinetic theory, describing a gas as particles in random motion
* Kinetic energy, the energy of an object that it possesses due to i ...
effects. However Steele's aim is not to exploit optical illusions
Within visual perception, an optical illusion (also called a visual illusion) is an illusion caused by the visual system and characterized by a visual percept that arguably appears to differ from reality. Illusions come in a wide variety; thei ...
for spectacular effect, such as to produce retinal after-images to cause visual disturbance or interference, reversible perspective (objects that seem to both advance and recede), the illusion of vibration and shimmer – all derided as tricks or gimmicks by some art critics. In Steele's work any such distortions are the side-effects of the underlying systems of his works.
Steele was a member of 56 Group Wales
The 56 Group Wales ( cy, Grŵp 56 Cymru) is an artists' organisation founded in Wales in 1956, with the aim of promoting Welsh Modernist art and artists. The name was originally simply the 56 Group: "Wales" was added in 1967, in response to a fe ...
from 1963 to 1974, and a ''life / honorary member'' since 1974.
Systems group, 1970s
Steele was a founder member of the Systems group of artists along with Malcolm Hughes (1920–1997) in December 1969. The group included Michael Kidner, Gillian Wise
Gillian Mary Wise (16 February 1936 – 11 April 2020) was a British artist devoted to the application of concepts of rationality and aesthetic order to abstract paintings and reliefs. Between 1972 and 1990 she was known as Gillian Wise Ci ...
(1936–), Peter Lowe (1938–), Colin Jones (1934–), David Saunders (1936–), Jean Spencer (1942–1998), Richard Allen (1933–99), John Ernest
John Ernest (May 6, 1922 – July 21, 1994) was an American-born constructivist abstract artist. He was born in Philadelphia, in 1922. After living and working in Sweden and Paris from 1946 to 1951, he moved to London, England, where he lived and w ...
(1922–1994) and others. The group arose through an exhibition of nine artists, "Systeemi-System", organised by Steele and his then wife, the textile designer Arja Nenonen (1936–2011), at the Amos Anderson Museum in Helsinki, capital of Nenonen's native Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
, in 1969. The exhibition was subtitled by Steele "An Exhibition of Syntactic Art from Britain", the word "syntactic" referring to the work "being constructed from a vocabulary of largely geometric forms in accordance with pre-determined and often mathematically-based systems".[ The Helsinki show was followed by a similar one called "Matrix" at the ]Arnolfini Gallery
Arnolfini is an international arts centre and gallery in Bristol, England. It has a programme of contemporary art exhibitions, artist's performance, music and dance events, poetry and book readings, talks, lectures and cinema. There is also a ...
in Bristol and the 1972/3 Arts Council touring exhibition "Systems" which opened at the Whitechapel Gallery
The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fir ...
in London in March 1972. This was followed by "Systems II" at the Polytechnic of Central London
, mottoeng = The Lord is our Strength
, type = Public
, established = 1838: Royal Polytechnic Institution 1891: Polytechnic-Regent Street 1970: Polytechnic of Central London 1992: University of Westminster
, endowment = £5.1 million ...
in 1973. Individual members showed at the Lucy Milton gallery in Notting Hill
Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road M ...
, London, up to 1975, and in continental Europe during the 1970s and afterwards. The group ceased to exist in 1976 following political disagreements, but a number of its members remained on friendly terms and exhibited together.
The Arts Council of Great Britain put on a touring exhibition of 15 artists called "Constructive Context" in 1978-9, curated by Stephen Bann
Stephen Bann CBE, British Academy, FBA (born 1 August 1942 in Manchester, England) is the Emeritus Professor of History of Art at the University of Bristol. He attended Winchester College and King's College, Cambridge, attaining his Doctor of ...
, which brought together members of the former Systems group, and Gillian Wise organised a constructivist section in the 1978 Hayward annual exhibition.
Neglect in the UK, 1980s and 1990s
Between the two groups of Systems-related exhibitions (in the 1970s and the revival of interest in 2005–2008), Steele and other former members of the group and related artists continued to exhibit widely in continental Europe, eastern Europe and Russia, and had works bought for public collections there.[ However in the UK the attention of the art world shifted to ]conceptualism
In metaphysics, conceptualism is a theory that explains universality of particulars as conceptualized frameworks situated within the thinking mind. Intermediate between nominalism and realism, the conceptualist view approaches the metaphysical co ...
. Steele and his associates may also have suffered from a perception of their art as cold or inscrutable. Furthermore the group has also been associated with the political left
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
and Russian Constructivism of the early Soviet era, and many of its members (including Steele) see a strong affinity between their art and Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
. But at a time when the Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
was raging and Thatcherism
Thatcherism is a form of British conservative ideology named after Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher that relates to not just her political platform and particular policies but also her personal character and general style of manag ...
was in the ascendancy the work of Steele and his contemporaries did not find general favour in UK art circles. Meanwhile it was also distrusted by many on the revolutionary left as allegedly elitist, being not readily appreciated by the masses. He was a leading member of the professional association called "Group Proceedings" that was intended for artists to theorise art practices, also during his time at Portsmouth Fine Art Department. At Portsmouth he led the seminar "Some Questions Concerning Fine Art and the Propagation of Ideas by Means of Images" which became known, due to its Marxist content, (affectionately and otherwise) as the "Ideology Course", from which there are extensive papers and one of the direct and indirect outcomes of this is the theoretical work of Gary Tedman and Iona Singh.
Revival of interest, 2005-8
After the "Constructive Context" exhibition of 1978-9 it was not until 2005 that a similar exhibition was held. This was at Southampton City Art Gallery
The Southampton City Art Gallery is an art gallery in Southampton, southern England. It is located in the Civic Centre on Commercial Road.
The gallery opened in 1939 with much of the initial funding from the gallery coming from two bequests, o ...
, called "Elements of Abstraction: Space, Line and Interval in Modern British Art", curated by Professor Brandon Taylor and Dr Alan Fowler of Winchester School of Art
Winchester School of Art is the art school of the University of Southampton, situated 10 miles (14 km) north of Southampton in the city of Winchester near the south coast of England.
History
The Winchester School of Art was founded in 187 ...
. This was followed by "Towards a Rational Aesthetic: Constructive Art in Post-war Britain" at the Osborne Samuel Gallery in London in 2007 and "A Rational Aesthetic", a second exhibition at Southampton City Art Gallery in 2008. All of these featured the work of Steele and like-minded artists. The 2008 show also featured the work of Anthony Hill (1930–) and Kenneth Martin (1905–1984), who along with his wife, Mary Martin
Mary Virginia Martin (December 1, 1913 – November 3, 1990) was an American actress and singer. A muse of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she originated many leading roles on stage over her career, including Nellie Forbush in '' South Pacific'' (194 ...
(1907–69), and Victor Pasmore
Edwin John Victor Pasmore, CH, CBE (3 December 190823 January 1998) was a British artist. He pioneered the development of abstract art in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s.
Early life
Pasmore was born in Chelsham, Surrey, on 3 December 1908. He ...
(1908–98) was a leading figure in the revival of Constructivism in Britain and America in the 1940s, forerunners of the Systems group.
Personal life
Steele was married twice, to Glenda Reynolds with whom he had two children, Simon (born 1958) and Tamara (born 1959), and to the Finnish artist-weaver Arja Nenonen. After his second marriage ended he had a relationship with the artist Judy Clark
Judy Clark (June 9, 1921 – December 27, 2002) was an American film and television actress and singer. Clark adopted a brash and energetic singing style, similar to that of musical-comedy star Betty Hutton (with trade critics almost alw ...
, with whom he had a daughter, the artist Clara Clark.
Steele was interviewed extensively by the researcher Cathy Courtney for the Artists' Lives section of the British Library's ''National Life Stories
National Life Stories is an independent charitable trust and limited company (registered as the ‘National Life Story Collection’) based within the British Library Oral History section, whose key focus and expertise is oral history fieldwork. S ...
'' project. The British Library also holds a collection of video recordings made by Steele in his home and studio between 1997 and 2011.
Steele lived and worked in Southsea
Southsea is a seaside resort and a geographic area of Portsmouth, Portsea Island in England. Southsea is located 1.8 miles (2.8 km) to the south of Portsmouth's inner city-centre. Southsea is not a separate town as all of Portsea Island's s ...
, Hampshire.[ He died on 21 June 2021.]
References
External links
jeffreysteele.co.uk
Website devoted to the artist and his work.
*
19 artworks by or after Jeffrey Steele
at the Art UK
Art UK is a cultural, education charity in the United Kingdom, previously known as the Public Catalogue Foundation. Since 2003, it has digitised more than 220,000 paintings by more than 40,000 artists and is now expanding the digital collection t ...
site: Some of Steele's work in public collections in the UK
* Interview with Steele on the opening night of ''The Responsive Eye'' exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, New York in 1965.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Steele, Jeffrey
1931 births
2021 deaths
British abstract artists
British conscientious objectors
Artists from Cardiff
People from Southsea
Alumni of Cardiff School of Art and Design
Members of the 56 Group Wales
Op art