Anthony Hatwell: Sculpture & Drawing

Anthony Hatwell (born 1931) studied under David Bomberg – a powerful avant-garde figure in British art – in the early 1950s and developed alongside artists such as Lucien Freud and Leon Kossoff to become vice president of the London Group from 1961-63. The London Group at that time included figures such as David Hockney, Michael Andrews and Frank Auerbach. Considering this prestigious background, Talbot Rice Gallery is delighted to be able to present Anthony Hatwell’s first solo exhibition.

Following the strict formal restraints Bomberg imposed on painting, Hatwell sought to resolve a modernist approach to sculpture that avoided any superfluous details or decorative features. In his own terms he attempted to create a ‘metaphor’ from an object, seeking to capture its fundamental spatial aspects and ‘humanistic subject’. The works on display in this exhibition, also including paintings and drawings, reference canonical artistic forms, such as reclining female forms, portraits and still lifes, worked out against a commitment to principles shared with other key figures of 20th century art, such as Picasso and Matisse.

As Head of Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art (1969-1990), Hatwell helped to usher in modernism. Respected by those who know his work and were taught by him at college, he can be seen to have had a strong impact on art education in Scotland. Talbot Rice Gallery is pleased to be able to bring Hatwell’s work to broader public attention in an exhibition offering a rare opportunity to engage artworks that are a testament to the legacy of Modern Art.