Graham Sutherland was born in London. He was apprenticed as an engineer before studying engraving at Goldsmiths College in London. From 1928-32 he taught etching, engraving and book illustration. His real development as a painter dates from the mid 1930s, when he visited Pembrokeshire in the Welsh border country, and began a series of paintings based on landscape and natural forms. In 'moments of vision' he felt that things were taking on a life of their own, and undergoing a metamorphosis from a static, fixed shape, to an undefined, indeterminate form. In his own words, he was fascinated by the 'whole problem of the tensions produced by the power of growth'. He was appointed an Official War Artist in 1940. The subjects roused by the war - armament factories, shattered masonry, underground mines - all confirm Sutherland in his instinct for a cruel, unapprehending world, and he chose a palette of intense, cold colours to reinforce this impression. After the war, he concentrated on images which made this impression even more forceful, in particular the thorn tree, an obsessive symbol of cruelty. From the mid 1950s he spent at least half of each year in France, increasingly establishing a reputation as a portrait, as well as landscape, painter. He designed the mural The Origins of the Land for the 1950 Festival of Britain and the vast tapestry Christ in Gloryinstalled in Coventry Cathedral in 1962. He had an enormous impact on the next generation of artists in England. Labelled a Neo-Romantic, Sutherland belonged to no school but was regarded as a master in his own right. His work was shown at the 1952 Venice Biennale and at the 1955 Bienal de Säo Paulo.

Further reading:
Roberto Tassi, Graham Sutherland Complete Graphic Work, Thames and Hudson, London 1978
Roberto Tassi, Sutherland The Wartime Drawings, Sotheby Parke Bernet Publications, London 1980
Roger Berthoud, Graham Sutherland A Biography, Faber and Faber, London 1982
Graham Sutherland, Tate Gallery, London 1982 (essay by Ronald Alley)
Graham Suitherland Correspondences, The Graham and Kathleen Sutherland Foundation, 1982

Glossary

  • Etching

    An intaglio process whereby a metal plate (normally copper, zinc or steel) is covered with an acid-resistant layer of rosin mixed with wax. With a sharp point, the artist draws through this ground to reveal the plate beneath. The plate is then placed in an acid bath (a water and acid solution) and the acid bites into the metal plate where the drawn lines have exposed it. The waxy ground is cleaned off and the plate is covered in ink and then wiped clean, so that ink is retained only in the etched lines. The plate can then be printed through an etching press. The strength of the etched lines depends on the length of time the plate is left in the acid bath.

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