Albert Irvin: Obituary
This is a brief summary of the obituary of Albert Irvin who died at the
age of 92 years on 26 March 2015. The
obituary was published in The Guardian newspaper on 28th March 2015:
its author was Mike Tooby
Albert Irvin: Obituary
In the 1980s and 1990s Irvin’s work came to
the fore in public awareness through widespread exhibition and reproduction. This marked Irvin’s emergence as a successful
painter when he was in his 60s.
He ‘created an extraordinary body of abstract
paintings, watercolours and prints’. The
‘expression of the life force within the space of the image’ was the motivation
for Irvin’s works and his ‘celebratory approach’.
Irvin was born in south east London and was
evacuated to Northamptonshire at the outbreak of the Second World War. He was able to attend Northampton School of
Art, and here he met the Revd Walter Hussey who was Vicar of St.Matthew’s
Church in Northampton. Hussey became an
advocate of churches commissioning contemporary art: he owned works by Spencer
and Sutherland and he had a profound influence on ‘Irvin’s emerging sense of
the potency of art’.
Irvin flew with the RAF with 236 Squadron and
took part in bombing raids on Germany.
The experience of flying over a landscape with a map made an important
impression on Irvin, as did the destruction of bombing. In 1947 Irvin resumed art studies – at
Goldsmiths Collage in London.
Irvin and his wife Betty Nicholson worked
together on art projects to earn a living including early fabric designs for
Laura Ashley. Irvin’s works in the 1940s
and 1950s were ‘initially abstract, in the terminology of the day’. Irvin met the artists associated with
Cornwall such as Peter Lanyon and Terry Frost but his works became more
influenced by the New York school of abstract expressionism: they took on a
‘more gestural approach’ and became ‘freed from connection to observational
drawing’.
In the late 1970s Irvin made crucial changes
to his style: he took up acrylics in place of oils: the relative thinness of
the newer medium is noteworthy. In 1980
Irvin took up screen printing. Three of
Irvin’s large works are at Homerton Hospital, Chelsea & Westminster
Hospital and Warwick University Arts Centre.
Irvin was deeply influenced by music, and in
particular by his experience of hearing Rostropovich playing Shostakovich’s
First Cello Concerto at the Royal Festival Hall. London, in 1961.
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