Handel Evans was born in Pontypridd in 1932 and trained at Cardiff College of Art 1949–54 where his teachers were Eric Malthouse and David Tinker. Evans, an accomplished pianist, was torn between a musical career and art but eventually turned to the latter. He travelled widely, living and painting in the Caribbean from 1959-61 and then in Germany, Italy and the United States. Evans attended the British School at Rome in 1962-63 and in 1975-76 studied with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17, Paris. From the 1970s man and technology became a dominant theme in Evans’ work, which moved away from realism and increasingly drew upon Futurism, Surrealism and Cubism.
Evans’ first solo shows were in the Caribbean, in Jamaica in 1962 and 1964 and Barbados in 1968. He held extensive exhibitions in Germany, including Deutscher Beamtenbund Berlin in 1992 and a memorial show in 1999 in Korbach Museum, and also had shows in Spain and the United States. British exhibitions included Brown’s Hotel, London in 1972 and Clare Hall, Cambridge in 1987 but he always received more acclaim internationally than in the UK. In 2001 he was posthumously honoured in the United States with the National Welsh-American Foundation’s Contemporary Culture Award. Clare Hall Cambridge, Ashmolean Museum Oxford, Newport Museum and Art Gallery and National Gallery of Jamaica hold examples. University of Aberystwyth, Wales looks after his archives and has a substantial collection of Evans’ work.
‘Violence’‘Boarding a Roman bus’‘Birdhandlers study’‘Colour-Study for “The Mechanical Men” (Number 8 in Series of 10)’
Please click on thumbnail for full image and more information about the artwork
