European

All European Artists

BLAKESTON, Oswell

Oswell Blakeston - Safely Home
‘The Harbour’
‘Black Hole’
‘Safely Home’
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Oswell Blakeston (1907-1985) was a painter, writer, film maker and critic. A man of extraordinary talents, Blakeston’s family was of Austrian origin and he was born Henry Hasslacher. At age 16 he ran away from a bourgeois upbringing to become a conjuror’s assistant, a cinema organist and then a clapper boy with David Lean at Gaumont film studios.

He began writing film criticism and, with Francis Brugiere, in the early 1930s he pioneered abstract films in Britain. As well as his painting and art criticism, Blakeston was also a novelist, playwright and poet with a “quick eye for the bizarre and the outrageous” according to his long-term partner and fellow artist Max Chapman.

Blakeston had over 40 solo shows, including Drian and Grabowski Galleries and New Vision Centre, and some 100 mixed shows. These included Leicester, Madden and Mercury Galleries. In 1981 he shared a show at Middlesborough Art Gallery with Max Chapman and in 1986 there was a memorial show at Camden Arts Centre. Victoria & Albert Museum and the Ulster Museum in Belfast hold his work, as do national galleries in Finland, Poland and Portugal.

CHRISTOFOROU, John

John Christoforou - Mother and Child
‘Bird Figure’
untitled
‘Head’
‘Mother and Child’
untitled
phoenix
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

John Christoforou (1921-2014) was a powerfully gestural abstract and figurative artist who used a brilliant palette, “a savage expressionist”, born in London to parents of Greek origin.

He was an important pioneer of the Nouvelle Figuration movement which emerged in the 1960s. This movement, which incorporated the work of Bacon, De Kooning and others, was a form of expressionism which reached far beyond the harmonised vision of perceptual reality, to create highly charged “infra-vital” images.

The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Athens School of Fine Art in late 2002 held a major retrospective in Athens honouring “an artist who made Greece famous in Europe and the whole world”.

Christoforou moved with his father to Greece in 1930 and he studied at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Athens before returning to England in 1938 and serving in the Royal Air Force 1941-46. He had his first solo show in 1949 at 20 Brook Street Gallery. In 1951-2 Christoforou lived and showed in Paris, destroying all his remaining earlier work.

Returning to London in 1953 he showed with Gimpel Fils and then joined Victor Musgrave’s Gallery One, where he had a number of solo shows, before settling in Paris in 1957. In 1965 Christoforou received the prize of the International Association of Art Critics in London.

He went on to exhibit extensively in the United States, Britain, France, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium and elsewhere. Retrospectives included Randers Kuntsmuseum, Denmark 1974, L’Ecole Regionale des Beuax-Arts d’Angers 1985 and Fondation d’Art Moderne en Picardie, Amiens 1988. Tate Gallery, the Government Art Collection, the Greek National Art Gallery and public collections in France, Colombia, Bangladesh, Mexico, Denmark, South Korea, Taiwan and Austria, amongst others, hold his work.

DAGHANI, Arnold

Arnold Daghani - abstract

‘Abstract’
‘Cottage’
‘Flowers’

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Arnold Daghani (1909-1985) was born in Suceava, Romania to a German-speaking Jewish family in what was then the borders of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He attended art school in Munich but returned to Romania and work at a publishing house. After escaping a Nazi concentration camp, Daghani painted prodigiously in Romania before emigration to Israel in 1959. He then lived in France 1961-70 and Switzerland 1970-77 before finally settling at Hove, Sussex in the UK.

Daghani – working in an expressionist style – felt an isolated figure artistically and much of his work, as a result of his experiences, dealt with darker subjects and feelings. Even so he showed in prestigious galleries, such as Leicester Galleries, London in its 1961 mixed show ‘Artists of Fame and Promise’, a solo show at Woodstock Gallery, London in 1961 plus a solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London in 1970.

Despite his perceived isolation, Daghani became increasingly well-known. In addition to exhibitions in Israel, France and Romania, later UK shows included “Arnold Daghani, A relentless spirit in art” at Brighton Polytechnic in 1984 and retrospectives at Barbican Centre and Ben Uri Art Gallery, London in 1992. A tour of his paintings opened in Zurich, Switzerland in 2004 before going on to Germany, Austria and Romania.

The University of Sussex holds the Daghani archives. His work is also held by the Ben Uri Art Gallery in London, the Albertina in Vienna, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and the National Gallery of Romania and the Museum of Modern Art in Bucharest. Guildford Cathedral exhibited Station of the Cross in 2014.

DRECKI, Zbigniew

Zbigniew Drecki - portrait of woman

futuristic Sultan
futuristic world
futuristic woman
portrait of woman
‘Straubing’
portrait of man

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Zbigniew Drecki (1922-1998) was born in Warsaw and survived incarceration during the war in both Auschwitz and Buchenwald, eventually escaping from a train transporting him to Dachau. He moved to Britain, settling with an English wife in Exmouth in Devon. Largely self-taught, Drecki for some time ran a painting school in Exmouth but in later years he concentrated solely on his own art.

Painting in a house he and his wife owned in Florida, in addition to his Devon home, Drecki’s artwork was vibrant, colourful and at times wildly imaginative – a stark contrast to the art produced by other camp survivors such as Arnold Daghani. He appears to have been concentrating on the positive and also pursued political projects aimed at encouraging world peace and philanthropy.

LANZI, Francois

Francois Lanzi - Into the Blue

Abstract 1962
Abstract 1963
Abstract 1964
Abstract 1965
Abstract 1966
‘Into the Blue’
‘Figures in Landscape’
‘Le Christ et Les Larrons’ (The Christ and the Thieves)

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Francois Lanzi (1916-1988) was born in Corsica and studied art in Paris under Guillot de Raffaillac. A prisoner of war from 1940-45, he came to live in the UK in 1954 and exhibited at a number of London Galleries including Redfern Gallery 1957, Royal Society of British Artists Gallery 1959 & 1960, Savage Gallery 1961 and Royal Academy 1965. Lanzi also had a number of exhibitions at the Artists International Association (AIA) in Soho, notably a solo exhibition in April-May 1967. In addition he showed in the provinces, including Stone Gallery at Newcastle in 1961.

A promising career was stymied by Lanzi becoming a virtual recluse from the 1960s, although he continued to paint and produce collages throughout his life at his Chiddingfold, Surrey home.

A major retrospective was held in 1994 at The Gallery in Woking. Lanzi’s work was in the ICI collection and is in a number of private collections in Britain, France and the United States.

MAYERSON, Anna

Anna Mayerson - Collage

untitled
untitled
untitled
‘Composition’
‘Collage’

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Anna Mayerson (1906-1984) was born in Vienna to a German Jewish family and studied art at the Vienna Academy and the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Zurich before fleeing Vienna for England in 1938.

She studied at the Slade School of Art in London and had solo shows at the Modern Art Gallery in 1942 and the Leger Gallery in 1943, both in London. In 1946 she took part in a show of five artists at the Redfern Gallery, others including Jankel Adler, Raoul Ubac and Graham Sutherland and in 1948 she had an exhibition with one other artist at the Hanover Gallery.

Her career in England was interrupted as Mayerson went to live in Taormina, Sicily from 1949-1959. During this period she exhibited extensively in Europe and Truman Capote described drawings for the front-piece of his 1951 novel The Grass Harp as ‘superb – beyond anything’.

She had a solo show in Galeria Odyssia in Rome in 1961 and two one-person exhibitions at Annely Juda Fine Art in London in 1971 and 1972. Numerous mixed exhibitions included A.I.A., Leicester Galleries, Arts Council and London Group.

Stylistically Mayerson began her career as a figurative artist but from the 1950s to mid-1960s painted in a bold abstract expressionist style, often using bitumen and metalwork in her paintings and constructions. From the mid-1960s Mayerson brought back figurative motifs, notably of heads and faces. Ben Uri Gallery and Somerville College, Oxford hold her work.

OTTESEN, Frederik Lund

Frederick Lund Ottesen - abstract gouache
abstract collage
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Frederik Lund Ottesen (1913-1975) was born in the United States and studied at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art before joining Braque’s Atelier in Paris in 1938. He exhibited at the Galerie des Quatre Chemins and, after war service, returned to Paris. He became friends with Hans Hartung and, influenced by him, turned to abstraction and showed extensively throughout Europe in the 1950s and 1960s.

He was affiliated with the prestigious Galerie Coard in Paris and Downtown Gallery in New York and had a first UK solo show at the Leicester Galleries, London in 1966. He also showed at Blomquist Gallery, Oslo and Galeries Tedesco and Quatre Chemins in Paris. Ottesen’s work is held by Syracuse Gallery, USA and Musee National d’ Arte Modern in Paris.

Frederick Lund Ottesen - abstract collage
abstract collage

SAUTER, Rudolf

Rudolf Sauter - cloud formation

‘Idea’
mountain farm
rocky cliff
cloud formation
‘The Malvern Hills’

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Rudolf Helmut Sauter (1895-1977), often known as R H Sauter, was a painter, printmaker, illustrator and poet, son of the artist George Sauter. He was educated at Harrow School, studying art in London and Munich, his father having come from Bavaria. Sauter had strong literary interests, being a member of the writers’ club PEN; he illustrated a definitive edition of works by his uncle John Galsworthy.

Sauter showed at the Royal Academy, the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, the Pastel Society, in the provinces, at the Paris Salon where he gained an Hon. Mention, and widely in the United States. He also had one-man shows in London and New York.

Although Sauter’s work is mainly figurative, in later life he did a series of abstracts. Many of Sauter’s paintings were destroyed by a fire in the 1980s but the National Portrait Gallery, Government Art Collection, Royal Watercolour Association and Ferens Art Gallery in Hull hold his work. Cornelia Parker chose a 1935 Sauter portrait as part of her hang of the Government Art Collection at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 2011.

SCHETTINI, Ulrico

Ulrico Schettini - Fagiani

‘Fagiani’

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Ulrico Schettini (1932-) was born in Cosenza, in the Italian Marches. After studying art at Pesaro, Paris and Rome he settled in England in 1958. An academically-inclined artist, during the 1960s and early 1970s he lectured at Hull College of Arts and Crafts, Carlisle College of Art and Design, Hornsea College of Art, the City Literary Institute and King’ College London. He worked in New York in 1964 and from 1966-71 lectured annually in America under the auspices of the Association of American Colleges.

Schettini’s early work was fiercely modernist, being “emotionally powerful” and displaying a chromatic austerity that “blends a basic outline of form with a free graphic improvisation within that form” (Art News and Review Jan 1959). Critics at the time equated his art with modern jazz movements. From the mid-1960s Schettini began producing more figurative work, in a strong expressive, dark style.

Schettini first solo exhibition was at the experimental New Vision Gallery in London in 1958, followed by one in Newcastle. He then exhibited in London at the Drian Gallery in 1959 and the Institute for Contemporary Art in 1961. He had group shows in London, Paris and Milan and then had a major retrospective exhibition at the Municipal Art Gallery, Hull in 1966 which attracted international attention.

About this time, though, despite the acclaim, he destroyed many works and disappeared to Italy to find himself again as an artist. He took ‘Montefiore’ as his professional name in homage to two potters he worked with there. A large exhibition of his subsequent work, which now included many ancient and archaeological influences, was given at the Café Royal, London in 1972 and a still more important exhibition at the Palazzo della Permanente, Milan in 1974. Wildensteins in New York also sold his work.

Montefiore moved back to Italy in the 1970s and continues to exhibit there. His work underwent another dramatic shift in the 1980s. He turned to a wider variety of media – he is currently working on stained glass, metals and ceramics as well as painting – and shifted entirely to representational art. The main motive behind this was religious and he now mainly concentrates on large-scale commissions for Catholic institutions in Peru, Spain and Italy. He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts at Brera, Milan.

Schettini’s work is held by Northwestern College, Orange City in Indiana and California University of Pennsylvania, South Australia House, London and other public collections.

TIRR, Willy

Willy Tirr - untitled
‘Untitled’
‘Growing’
‘Bad Weather Forecast’
untitled
untitled
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Willy Tirr (1915-1991) was born to German Jewish parents in Berlin and fled to England as war loomed. Self-taught as an artist, Tirr was interned in the UK and Australia before service in the British Army in intelligence. He was part of the unit that liberated Bergen-Belsen and was involved in the de-Nazification programme in Germany after the war.

On his return to England in 1947 he married and moved to Leeds, where his parents had found refuge. Tirr had continued to paint during the war, even having an exhibition in Normandy before the end of hostilities, but helped his family in a lamp-shade business to help make ends meet.

By the early 1950s Tirr’s expressionistic landscapes were giving way to a purer abstract style, influenced by the St Ives group in England but also American Abstract Expressionism, Taschism and Zen Buddhism.

Tirr started teaching at Leeds College of Art in 1957 and that same year had a joint exhibition at Austin Hayes Gallery in York with Terry Frost.

His reputation as an innovative modern artist grew and Tirr from 1957-1973 had solo shows in London in New Vision, Drian, AIA, Rowan, Ben Uri and Grabowski galleries amongst others. Other one-man shows were held in Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and many other Northern cities and in Switzerland, Australia and Canada.

Tirr ran what became Leeds Polytechnic School of Art in a turbulent period in the late 1960s and 1970s; he was then best known for his shaped canvases and watercolours, but his acrylics on canvas were particularly powerful.

Inner turmoil and European sensibilities combined to give his work a depth that marks him out as one of the finest abstract and expressionist painters in Britain from the 1950s to the 1970s. His work is held in many British public collections, though mainly in the North, and in public galleries in Australia and Israel.