Page 48 - Studio International - August 1965

boats. the breakwaters and sea-walls. the green Cornwall. Step by step he conquered the maturity of his
grazing land extending. on the right-hand side. as far vision and the means of transforming it into pictures. He
as to the cliffs. and the cut-away earth-works. the was the poet of Cornwall in paint. Deeply stirred by the
merging of sky and sea. the sea birds. their flight, their ever changing beauty of its landscape, its old traditions.
sounds; he will enter the pub and mingle with the its uniqueness. and bound to it by love and admiration.
people. he will drink and talk with them; in the he attacked his poetic goal again and again discovering
Registrar's Office he will study the history of the name. new secrets. new fascinations. new aspects. Pictures of
Porthleven. or some peculiar names of its inhabitants. a subtle and at the same time vigorous character left his
He will bring home some objet trouve from the spot studio in Carbis Bay for exhibitions in England and
with which he will identify all his impressions. And abroad. The victim of an air crash in the last week of
then the long and wary process of 'creation' will start. August. 1964. he succumbed to his injuries during the
the ·construction of the image of Porthleven·-neither night of the 1 st September. It is an irreparable loss to
'abstract' nor 'realistic'. but the witnessing of its full English painting. His fate can be compared to that of
existence in the human. geological and historical sense. Christopher Wood and to de Stael. both of whom he
One whole year the painter fought for the artistic appreciated highly.
rendering of this total experience. One whole year he Peter Lanyon was a landscape painter of great
painted and scraped away and re-painted until. integrity. He was not a realist but he painted reality-the
desperate. he finally destroyed the canvas. He had built reality and character of Cornwall and by way of it the
no less than five constructions in space to help him in reality and character of life itself and the world. His
the realisation of his vision. The first was an armature. development was cruelly broken in his prime.
resembling one which a sculptor would build for his Peter Lanyon was a meditative artist. Problems of the
work; and one can say that the tactile quality of this subconscious. of Existentialism. of Relativity; Jung.
construction was similar to that of a sculpture. The Jaspers. Heidegger. Teilhard de Chardin. Saint Exupery,
second was a structure representing the spatial develop­ to name only a few. occupied his searching mind. His
ments along the vertical and the horizontal. a space Expressionism. often spoken of as abstract. was con­
articulator. because it articulated the planes in space crete throughout. He used colours as Mallarmé used
and in depth. For the bottom part of the picture. the well-sounding words. and form. atmosphere. mood and
inner harbour. the ·womb' section with its spiral move­ clarity were melted together in his compositions into a
ment. starting and ending in itself. a rocking construc­ unity of exceptional quality. It may be that his greatest
tion. a 'mobile' was made. a bent bronze bar on a glass achievements were yet withheld frcm us. But his pic­
bearing, as number three. There followed another. the tures will be counted one day as among the most
fourth. construction containing sailing boats leaving the outstanding of this period in English painting. ■
harbour (the now white centre of the picture originally
agitated by boats based on this construction. was
finally eliminated and the space left empty), and the
fifth construction in curved semi-transparent perspex. Born on the 8th of February. 1918. in St. Ives. Cornwall. George
enclosing a mahogany figure right in the middle (also Peter Lanyon always lived in the district of his early childhood.
intended to serve for the middle section but later He spent one year at the Penzance Art School (1936) and one
eliminated). All these constructions were auxiliary to year at the Euston Road Art School (1938). He also received
the building up of the intricate totality of the five stages private tuition from Borlase Smart in 1936, and in 1939 worked
in which this painting was conceived. Seen from the for about six months with Ben Nicholson.
point of perspective and depth. it shows partially an He exhibited in 1949 at the Lefevre Gallery, in 1952. 1955.
aerial view; on the left-hand side we find a spiral 1958 and 1960 at Gimpel Fils. both in London. in 1956 in a
movement ending in a frontal aspect of the tower on the mixed exhibition: Six Painters from Cornwall. In 1957 and 1959
top (the tower is distant. the inner harbour near) ; pictures of his were shown in Catharine Viviano·s Gallery in New
York. In 1961 he represented. together with Lynn Chadwick and
another direction of movement goes from the lower William Scott. Great Britain at the Sao Paulo Biennale. In 1964
edge to about one-third upwards. then toward the (Sept.-Oct.) works of his were shown for the first time in the
right top corner suggesting the moving out of the har­ Gimpel & Hanover Galerie in Zurich.
bour. The lower part of the picture is flat, the middle is Paintings of his are in the following public collections: the
concave. the right-hand side is flat ending in an angular Tate Gallery, London. the Arts and British Councils. London;
build-up. If we add the rhythm or the dynamics as a City Art Gallery. Plymouth; City Art Gallery, Birmingham; Ferens
whole and certain signs (such as the arrow. the fleur de Art Gallery. Hull; City Art Gallery, Toronto; Smith College.
lys or the shape of the Cornish ship's bows) which are Northampton. Mass .. U.S.A.; Melbourne City Art Gallery; Buffalo
used as symbols (some houses on the terrace in Porth­ Museum; Carnegie Institute. Pittsburgh; and in Minneapolis.
leven have an arrow or fleur de lys decoration). we have U.S.A .. and Adelaide. Australia.
From 1950 to 1957 Lanyon was a part-time teacher at the Bath
mentioned all the elements with the help of which this Academy of Art in Corsham. Wiltshire; between 1955 and 1959
picture is built up. After its destruction the artist he was joint principal of St. Peter's Loft Art School in St. Ives.
repainted it on board in only four hours. and it is this In 1960 he was visiting lecturer at Falmouth School of Art and
final stage which we find in the Tate Gallery. It has all in 1961 in Bristol at the West of England College of Art. He was a
the freshness of an a la prima painting. The coarseness member of the Penwith Society of Arts and later on of the Society
of the material alternating with smoothness adds to the of Artists (both in Cornwall).
characteristics of the place and leads the mind towards Peter Lanyon travelled a great deal. There were journeys to
the fundamental. not towards the superficially attractive. Johannesburg and Holland. both in 1937. to Aix-in-Provence in
This painting is as much a confession as a discovery. 1938. The war years (R.A.F.) and post-war years (1942-46) were
'For me,' said Lanyon. 'painting is difficult and secret. ... spent in the Middle East and in Italy. In 1957 and 1959 he visited
New York in connection with his exhibition. In 1953 Lanyon
To remind people oftheirroots. that is one aim of my work'. received an Italian Government grant and spent four months in
To Peter Lanyon inner experience and artistic creation Italy. In 1960 he won the second prize in the British Section of
were as real as the granite rocks of his home county, the John Moores Exhibition in Liverpool.
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