JULIAN TREVELYAN

Is there another ModBrit artist who lived as interesting a professional life as Julian Trevelyan, the painter, printmaker, teacher and writer?

Julian Trevelyan (1910 - 1988) Clifton Suspension Bridge (1962), oil on canvas, 76.5 x 91.5cm

He studied etching in Paris, alongside the likes of Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Joan Miro and Oskar Kokoschka. He exhibited in the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936, alongside the first three of the aforementioned artists. He was a prime mover in the Mass Observation Movement, and championed Northumberland’s ‘Pitmen Painters’. He played an important part in WW2, with his work on camouflage having a real impact on the Allies’ success in North Africa in 1942, largely seen as the turning point in the war against the Nazis. After the war he had a spell teaching at the Royal College of Art: his students included David Hockney, RJ Kitaj and Norman Ackroyd. He was appointed an RA in 1987, less than a year before his death.

Trevelyan’s art came in a mad variety of styles, but there was always a childlike, dreamlike, fantastic quality about his work that made it unmistakably his own: his motto was ‘to dream is to create’. He lived on the banks of the Thames, and rivers were a common subject, particularly his series of 12 paintings ‘The Thames Suite’.

Freya Mitton will be showing Julian Trevelyan’s work at Stand 58, on the first floor of Saatchi Gallery, during British Art Fair.