Derrick Sayer studied at Chelsea School of Art under Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland. He founded the Mousehole Group Art School in 1936 with George Lamborn and Guy Allen. This was a short lived venture, and Sayer turned to graphic work for advertising campaigns and book illustrations. In 1966 he became a lecturer at Chelsea and Westminster Adult Education Institute where he remained until his retirement as Head of Art in 1982. Sayer exhibited throughout his life at the Redfern Gallery, Leicester Gallery and the New Art Centre, amongst others. His work owed much to Ben Nicholson’s linear abstraction and to the Neo-Romantics sense of man in nature

Glossary

  • Abstraction

    To abstract means to remove, and in the art sense it means that artist has removed or withheld references to an object, landscape or figure to produce a simplified or schematic work. This method of creating art has led to many critical theories; some theorists considered this the purest form of art: art for art’s sake. Unconcerned as it is with materiality, abstraction is often considered as representing the spiritual.