Ceri Richards was born in Dunvant near Swansea, Wales, on leaving school he was apprenticed to a local electrical engineering firm before studying at Swansea School of Art and later at the Royal College of Art, London. His early work from the 1930s, when he produced painted relief constructions using wood and metal, was influenced by the surrealist art of Picasso and Ernst. He had a lifelong love of music which is revealed in his later work.

Ceri Richards was born in 1903 in Wales but lived most of his life in London.

C. Richards was a brilliant musician and most of his works are explicitly influenced by musical theme: the most popular ones in this sense are the paintings from the series “la cathedrale engloutie” inspired by Debussy’s prelude. In 1962 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale.

He often referred to the term “sensation” as the feeling he wanted to provoke in his viewers: his practice focused on the involvement with his work and a process where the image had to be discovered and could not be premeditated. In a Surrealist fashion he applied the concept of automatism, which refers to the exploitation of unpremeditated effects.

He engaged in long and exhausting sessions of work, confident that the struggle and the physical and gestural interaction with his canvases was the key to produce compelling and stirring works.

 

The paint has a tactile quality and the final image was built through the application of multiple layers of colours which are obliterated by different practices, techniques and physical attacks: the paint is scraped off, the canvas rubbed down with turps, he scratches the paint through to the bottom layer and apply all sort of physical interventions on his pieces. Although he mainly produced oil paintings, he also used gouache or acrylic and incorporated foreign objects and materials into painting creating constructions or collages.

Glossary

  • Acrylic

    Modern synthetic paint that combines some of the properties of oils and watercolour. Most are water-based, although some are oil compatible, using turpentine as a thinner. When it became available to artists in America around 1936 it was the first new painting medium in centuries and has become a serious rival to oil paint because of its versatility. Acrylic paints can be used on nearly any surface. The water-based nature of acrylic paint allows for easy application and rapid drying time: acrylic paint dries in a matter of minutes, as opposed to the many months required for oil-based paints. Once the paint has been applied to a surface, the water evaporates, leaving behind the synthetic resin (and pigment), which is no longer water-soluble. Visually, acrylic-based paints can appear to be very similar to oil-based paints, but they cannot rival the rich, translucent nature of oils.

  • Canvas

    A piece of cloth woven from flax, hemp or cotton fibres. The word has generally come to refer to any piece of firm, loosely woven fabric used to paint on. Its surface is typically prepared for painting by priming with a ground.

  • Gouache

    A paint composed of water-soluble pigment, which has been ground in gum, usually gum Arabic, like watercolour, but made opaque with the addition of white pigment. Creates effects similar to those of oil paint, but lightens in colour during drying and cracks if used thickly.

  • Metal

    Metal is a medium frequently used by artists to make art works - from sculpture to printmaking. Surfaces can display an array of colours and textures, and are capable of being polished to a high gloss; metal can be melted, cast, or fused, hammered into thin sheets, or drawn into wire.

  • Oil

    A medium in which ground pigments are mixed to produce a paste or liquid that can be applied to a surface by a brush or other tool; the most common oil used by artists is linseed, this can be thinned with turpentine spirit to produce a thinner and more fluid paint. The oil dries with a hard film, and the brightness of the colour is protected. Oil paints are usually opaque and traditionally used on canvas.

  • Painting

    Work of art made with paint on a surface. Often the surface, also called a support, is a tightly stretched piece of canvas, paper or a wooden panel. Painting involves a wide range of techniques and materials, along with the artist's intellectual concerns effecting the content of a work.

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  • Art Project

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