John Dunbar (born 1943 in
Mexico City) is a British artist,
collector, and former gallerist, best known for his connections to the art and music scenes of the 1960s
counterculture.
Personal life and career
Dunbar was born in Mexico City in 1943, the son of the British filmmaker, Robert Dunbar. He has three sisters, Marina Adams, an architect, and twins Margaret and Jennifer Dunbar. He spent his first four years in Moscow, where his father was a cultural attache, before the family returned to England.
Dunbar attended the
University of Cambridge, where he met the singer
Marianne Faithfull. They were married on 6 May 1965, with
Peter Asher as the
best man,
and spent their honeymoon in Paris, with the Beat poets
Allen Ginsberg and
Gregory Corso.
[Kate Bernard,]
Playing to the gallery
, ''The Observer'', 5 November 2006 The couple lived in a flat at 29
Lennox Gardens
Lennox Gardens, a park in Canberra, Australia, lying on the south side of Lake Burley Griffin, close to Commonwealth Avenue Bridge and Albert Hall in the suburb of Yarralumla. Before the construction of Lake Burley Griffin a road ran through ...
,
Knightsbridge, London. On 10 November 1965, she gave birth to their son, Nicholas. She then "...left her husband to live with
Mick Jagger..." telling the ''
New Musical Express
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
'' that "my first move was to get a
Rolling Stone as a boyfriend. I slept with three and decided the lead singer was the best bet."
Dunbar and Faithfull divorced in 1970.
In 1965, Dunbar co-founded the
Indica Gallery
Indica Gallery was a counterculture art gallery in Mason's Yard (off Duke Street), St James's, London from 1965 to 1967, in the basement of the Indica Bookshop. John Dunbar, Peter Asher, and Barry Miles owned it, and Paul McCartney supported ...
with
Barry Miles. The gallery became known for staging exhibitions by cutting-edge artists, including
Boyle Family and
Yoko Ono from the
Fluxus movement. It was at Indica where he introduced Ono to
John Lennon. Indica folded in just two years, after which Dunbar became an artist and exhibited work alongside
Peter Blake and
Colin Self
Colin E Self (born 1941 in Rackheath, Norfolk) is an English Pop Artist, whose work has addressed the theme of Cold War politics.
As a student at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1961 to 1963 Colin Self received encouragement for his drawings ...
. From 1969 to 1971 Dunbar was exhibitions officer for the British Council, revitalizing their programme by promoting a new generation of artists such as Barry Flanagan, Colin Self, Bruce McLean and Clive Barker.
With Jill Matthews, Dunbar later fathered William Dunbar,
[ now a journalist based in Tbilisi, Georgia.
In January 2006, Dunbar participated in the International Symposium on LSD in Basel honouring LSD inventor Albert Hofmann on his 100th birthday. With John Hopkins and Barry Miles, Dunbar gave the seminar "LSD and its visual impact".. That same year, Dunbar took part in the re-staging of Indica by Riflemaker Gallery in Soho, London, hosting an in conversation with Yoko Ono and as guest speaker with a talk entitled INDICATIONS....
Since the 1960s, Dunbar has consistently maintained an eclectic practice encompassing drawing and collage (particularly in notebook context); sculpture and assemblage; photography and film.]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dunbar, John
1943 births
Living people
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
People from Mexico City
British people of Russian descent
English artists
Art dealers from London