Preview: Albert Irvin and Abstract Expressionism, RWA

This winter the Royal West of England Academy presents the first major retrospective of British artist Albert Irvin, alongside a 60th anniversary celebration of the Tate’s seminal exhibition, The New American Painting.

Albert Irvin RA OBE (1922-2015) was one of Britain’s most important post-war painters and printmakers. He is best known for his large-scale abstract colourist paintings – some of the most distinctive to have ever been produced in this country.

Sixty years ago in 1959, Irvin visited an exhibition called The New American Painting at Tate. This MOMA-curated show brought the boldest and best new artistic talent from across the Atlantic to London. The exhibition redefined what was possible for a generation of British artists. For Irvin, it was an epiphany.

Albert Irvin, ‘Rosetta’ (2012)

Albert Irvin and Abstract Expressionism brings together works by major abstract expressionist artists from the late 1950s, including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Sam Francis and Adolph Gottlieb. The exhibition will be a rare opportunity to see international loans by Jack Tworkov and Grace Hartigan, two of the original exhibitors in The New American Painting. These will be shown alongside other UK abstract artists, such as Peter Lanyon, Basil Beattie, Gillian Ayres, John Hoyland and Sandra Blow.

The exhibition is curated by the RWA’s President of Academicians, Stewart Geddes – himself a former student and friend of Albert Irvin. “In many ways Britain was regarded as a ‘backwater’ in terms of visual art after World War II, and was still coming to terms with Cezanne and Post-Impressionism,” Stewart explains to us.

Albert Irvin, ‘Greenwich III’ (1991)

“The sheer size of the Abstract Expressionists’ painting, along with their virtuosity and improvised handling of paint – Pollock’s drip technique, De Kooning’s gestural confidence, Barnett Newman’s vast areas of flat colour – was something entirely new, and made British artists radically reconsider what was possible in painting.

“No one gives an artist a map of where their work might go, and Irvin embarked on a journey to locate a personal visual language – using highly saturated colour, expressed through large slabs and zones.  His mature style is essentially celebratory in character, richly luminous and spatially complex.”

Adolph Gottlieb (‘Labyrinth No. 2’, 1950, pictured here) was one of the Abstract Expressionist artists to influence Irvin

Oddly, although The New American Painting was a hugely exciting exhibition that challenged assumptions about the visual arts, it featured just one female artist, Grace Hartigan was the one woman artist included.  Despite this, British female artists responded equally to the show, and the work of artists such as Gillian Ayers and Sandra Blow (included in the RWA exhibition) received significant critical attention throughout their careers.

The exhibition’s impact was huge – and, Stewart argues, has been far-reaching. “Abstraction and its many forms have now been assimilated into the visual arts landscape.  You could say there is still a frisson to be derived from crossing over to abstraction from figuration, but it probably doesn’t quite have quite the same significance as it did during the 1950s.”

Albert Irvin and Abstract Expressionism Dec 8-March 3, Royal West of England Academy. For more info, visit www.rwa.org.uk

Pictured top: Albert Irvin, Almada (1985, detail)