Rodney Gladwell (1928–1979) was a British artist born in Didcot, Oxfordshire, England whose paintings "hover between abstraction and figuration and play on this ambiguity". Between 1949-1950, he followed in the foot steps of one of the greatest figurative painters of the 20th Century

Amedeo Modigliani Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...

and studied in Paris at the

Académie Colarossi The Académie Colarossi (1870–1930) was an art school in Paris founded in 1870 by the Italian model and sculptor Filippo Colarossi. It was originally located on the Île de la Cité, and it moved in 1879 to 10 rue de la Grande-Chaumière in the ...

. His work varied but a continual theme was his "heavily stylised female nudes". He exhibited in London and Paris with the

Piccadilly Gallery The Piccadilly Gallery was an art gallery that operated from a number of addresses in London between 1953 and 2007. It was originally founded as the Pilkington Gallery in 1953 by Eve Pilkington and her husband Godfrey Pilkington, with a focus o ...

, before being taken on by the gallery owner

Lucy Wertheim Lucy Carrington Wertheim (''née'' Pearson; 1882, in Whitechapel, London – 1971, in Brighton) was an English gallery owner who founded the Twenties Group of "English artists in their twenties" in 1930 and was Christopher Wood's main patron b ...

and towards the end of his career the noted Swiss dealer . In the 1960s, he undertook several large commissions to paint extensive murals for

Sussex University , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

(where he was later given a retrospective exhibition) and the Georgian Club in London. His work is held by the

Arts Council of Great Britain The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. It was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England (now Arts Council England), the Scottish Arts Council (l ...

and

University of Johannesburg The University of Johannesburg (UJ) is a public university located in Johannesburg, South Africa. The University of Johannesburg came into existence on 1 January 2005 as the result of a merger between the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), the Te ...

. In the 1970s, his work fell out of favour and he disappeared from the art scene.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gladwell, Rodney 1979 deaths 1928 births 20th-century English painters English male painters English muralists Académie Colarossi alumni 20th-century English male artists