Peter Lanyon was a celebrated landscape painter and a leading figure of Abstract Expressionism in Britain. Lanyon was initially influenced by abstract artists such as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, and the Russian Constructivists. After World War II, however, he rejected abstraction for more direct references to the local landscape, focusing on Cornwall’s natural environment, communities, and industries. “It is impossible for me to make a painting which has no reference to the very powerful environment in which I live,” he once said. Some of his final works were inspired by gliding, which he took up to explore the Cornish coastline, an activity that led to his untimely death in an accident in 1964.
PETER LANYON
Gouache
25 x 35.5cm
Acquired in 2014
