ALAN REYNOLDS - OBITUARY
This is a brief summary of the
obituary of Alan Reynolds that was published online by the Daily Telegraph on 3rd
September 2014.
Alan Reynolds
Alan Munro Reynolds was born in
Newmarket, Suffolk, in April 1926.
In 1944, aged 18, he joined the
Highland Light Infantry. At the end of
the Second World War Alan Reynolds trained as a teacher and took up a teaching
post at Hanover, West Germany. Here he ‘was
introduced to the avant-garde’. He
described it as “the most important experience I had”.
After teaching in Hanover for 18
months Reynolds returned to London.
Reynolds attended Woolwich Polytechnic Art School from 1948 to 1952, and
later the Royal College of Art. He had a
one man show in London whilst a student; his first New York show was in 1954.
Reynolds’ career as an artist falls
into two halves: landscape and abstract painting in the 1950s and 1960s; and
constructive art from the 1960s until Reynolds’ death.
Landscape and abstract painting in
the 1950s and 1960s
Reynolds’ landscape works of the
1950s are described as a series of ‘spectral scenes’ of his childhood Suffolk:
they ‘hum with elemental anxieties’. ‘The
war’s legacy’ is stated to have ‘echoed through his strokes’. In Winter
Pastoral, Kent (1952) a Kent landscape becomes a ‘sepia-toned
necropolis’. Frances Christie, Head of
Modern and Post-War British Art at Sotheby’s is quoted as saying of Reynolds
that “he had that rare ability to capture the essence of British landscape and
render it completely contemporary, a feat that not many artists were able to
achieve so successfully”. Reynolds won
acclaim as ‘the golden boy of post neo-romanticism’ with the success of his
1956 exhibition at the Redfern Gallery.
Reynolds was constantly reinventing
his approach. He is reported to have
said that, apart from one occasion, he never painted landscape en plein
air. Reynolds had pursued ‘a quest for
equilibrium’ since he left the Royal College of Art in 1953. Reynolds particularly valued Herbert Read’s
Faber book on Paul Klee.
The concrete image: from 1968
In the 1960s Reynolds work became
dominated by ‘structures’ and ‘forms’.
From 1968 onwards Reynolds abandoned representational painting and concentrated
on the ‘concrete’ image: ‘for more than 45 years Reynolds made tonal modular
drawings, woodcuts and constructed reliefs – many completely white’.
Reynolds achieved international
success in this style, and he was particularly admired in France and
Germany. In Britain his landscapes of
the 1950s remained the favoured style.
Alan Reynolds died on 28th
August 2014.
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