Julian Trevelyan (British 1910-1988)
Trevelyan had no formal art training but joined Hayter's atelier in Paris in 1931 where he worked alongside artists such as Ernst, Kokoschka, Masson, Miró and Picasso.
In 1937, he joined Tom Harrisson's Mass Observation movement which was to have a profound effect on his work.
Since the Second World War his work was mainly concerned with depicting scenes from around his Hammersmith home and of the River Thames.
In the early years of the 50's there was a gradual change of direction in his style, the softer "French" manner giving way to a tougher more linear style with much stronger colours bounded by thicker, heavier black outlines, linking Trevelyan with the St. Ives' painters like Frost, Winter and Heron.
Between 1955 and 1963, Trevelyan worked at the Royal College of Art where he became Head of the Etching Department. Not only was he a highly influential teacher, teaching students such as David Hockney, Ron Kitaj and Norman Ackroyd, he was also an important innovator of modern print techniques and today is increasingly regarded as the quiet driving force behind the etching revolution of the 1960s.
Trevelyan's work has always defied categorisation or pigeonholing and much of its interest derives from the apparently opposing instincts towards figurative realism and poetic fantasy. He was happily producing straightforward gouaches of Spain and the West of Ireland alongside Surrealist inspired painted wooden collages influenced by Paul Klee and Ben Nicholson. He was brilliantly inventive and possessed a wit and innocence of eye that could discover enchantment in the most mundane scenes.
collections include:
Brooklyn Museum, New York
City Art Gallery, Aberdeen
Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
Museum of Art, Seattle
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Tate, London