Page 19 - Studio International - July August 1973

After 27 years of committed activity, during which
William Turnbull - time he has made many hundreds of works of the
highest quality, William Turnbull is this summer to
painter and sculptor have a major retrospective at the Tate Gallery.
The following tribute to him is in the form of a
Bernard Cohen personal interpretation of some aspects of his work.

William Turnbull is both painter and
sculptor. Many painters this century have made
sculptures as extensions of their paintings,
Newman, Kelly, Dubuffet and Braque among
them. Sculptors have not done so well at
painting. Paolozzi represents an extreme
(Right)
Horse 1946 example — found to a lesser degree in Moore,
Bronze, 28 in. high David Smith, Calder and Arp — of the
(Centre) sculptor's inclination toward the graphic.
Mobile /Stabile 1949 Turnbull has always regarded making painting
Bronze, 15 x 20 X 27 in. and sculpture as entirely separate activities and
Tate Gallery
has devoted as much time to one as to the other.
(Bottom) Neither needs to be interpreted through the
Forms on a base 1949
Maquette for a larger sculpture other.
Bronze, 18½ x 13½ in. Working during a period when many
`advanced' artists have tried to end the
divisions between painting and sculpture,
Turnbull has maintained a strict separation
between the ways they were each to be seen as
well as the ways in which they were each to be
made.
His paintings always explore the
characteristics of the rectangle, the physical
skin of the surface, its illusions, its colour and
its image. They always testify to the presence of
an artist highly sensitive to his own painting
procedures. In these respects he is a
traditional painter. His sculpture is concerned
with addition and reduction, the horizontal and
the vertical, the integrity with which parts are
joined and with objects and their internal
rhythms and the way we relate to them in space.
In these respects he is a traditional sculptor.
In so far as he paints and sculpts with equal
energy and commitment he is part of a
twentieth-century tradition that for good reason
has included few artists. The energy needed to
work in the way Turnbull works must be
enormous, which is why the names Picasso,
Matisse, Miró and Giacometti inspire in one a
sense of titanic vigour.
There are other similarities between Turnbull
and these four artists. They have all, without
inhibition, engaged themselves in the problems
of their fellow artists. All make nonsense of
William Turnbull - curriculum vitae
Born in 1922 in Dundee, Scotland
Lived in Paris 1948-50
First exhibition at Hanover Gallery, London, in 1950
Participated in Venice Biennale 1952
First visit to USA in 1957
Visit to Japan, Cambodia, Malaysia in 1962
Exhibition at Marlborough Gallery, New York,
in 1963
Group exhibition at Guggenheim Museum, New York
in 1964
Exhibition at Hayward Gallery, London 1968
Participated in 'Documenta 4' Kassel in 1969
Participated in First International Exhibition of
Modern Sculpture, Harone Open Air Museum,
Japan in 1969
(For further information see the Tate Gallery
catalogue of the exhibition, compiled by
Richard Morphet.)
9