This website is not intended as a comprehensive survey of
the scope and development of his work, but rather by emphasising
paintings from his two major cycles, Black Earth
(1980-83) and Europe (1973-86), it seeks
to focus on two extremes of the artist’s creativity
– nature and history.
One of Anthony Dorrell’s
greatest gifts was a capacity to treat his audience with a
degree of affection and respect. He had clear views of both
history and nature, and of the inseparability of one from
the other, and he was not a pessimist. Far from entertaining
any sentimental illusions about the timelessness of art and
the ephemeral nature of existence, he remained firmly in the
here and now. He was a constant advocate of freedom and defender
of social and individual justice and an avid enemy of the
hypocrisies of and pretensions of money and class. He lived
the twentieth century and used his gifts to offer both nature
and history the devotion of a lifetime, in witness and in
celebration.
For an artist who left such a huge body of
work it was incredible how rarely his works were shown to
the public. His last one-man exhibition was in 1968, as he
instead exhibited in group shows such as in London’s
Whitechapel Gallery show ‘Art for Society’ in
the seventies. His first and only posthumous exhibition took
place in 1989 at St Michael’s Mount, Longstanton.
Click
here for information about
where you can now see Anthony Dorrell's work. |
