Sheila May Girling (1 July 1924 – 14 February 2015) was a British artist, and wife of the sculptor

Anthony Caro Sir Anthony Alfred Caro (8 March 192423 October 2013) was an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using ' found' industrial objects. His style was of the modernist school, having worked with Henry Moor ...

. Girling was born in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

and studied at the Royal Academy. Her first solo exhibitions were in Canada but she also exhibited widely in Britain and the United States.

Biography

Sheila May Girling was born in

Erdington Erdington is a suburb and ward of Birmingham in the West Midlands County, England. Historically part of Warwickshire and located northeast of central Birmingham, bordering Sutton Coldfield. It was also a council constituency, managed by its o ...

on 1 July 1924. Her father, Cyril Stanley Frank Girling was an engineer working for Dunlop Tyre Company and her mother was Beatrice May, née Harvey. Many of her family members had been painters, including her paternal grandfather, uncle and aunt. Her grandfather was also an art dealer in London, who allegedly would deal in fakes and create forgeries at his studio. Girling was educated at the Birmingham School of Art and from 1947 trained at Royal Academy Schools, London. On 17 December 1947, she married Sir

, whom she had met as a university art student. They had two sons together: Timothy a zoologist; and Paul, a painter. She paused her art career to focus on raising them, however she would offer advice and criticism to her husband on his works. When she returned to the art world in the 1970s, she decided to focus on

Abstract art Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th ...

. Girling died of heart disease, at her home in Frongnal, on 14 February 2015.

Exhibitions

Girling held a few exhibitions of her works in America during the 1980s, as well as joining some group shows. By the end of the 1980s, she was exhibiting in the Graham Dixon and

Annely Juda Annely Juda CBE (born Anneliese Emily Brauer; September 23, 1914 – August 13, 2006) was a German art dealer known for founding the Annely Juda Fine Arts gallery in London. Notable artists represented have included Anthony Caro, David Hockney and ...

galleries in London. After her death in 2015, a retrospective of her work was held in the Annely Juda Gallery.

References

1924 births 2015 deaths Artists from Birmingham, West Midlands British women artists {{UK-artist-stub