Euan Uglow (1932 – 2000)
Euan Uglow was born in Norwood, South East London. He began to draw from a very early age and ‘was always making things’. At the outbreak of war, he was evacuated to Cornwall, later to Wales (his maternal grandfather was a Welsh miner), then moved with his family to Cheam in Surrey, where they were bombed out. In 1948 he started at Camberwell School of Art in London, where he was awarded the David Murray Scholarship. In 1951 he entered the Slade School of Fine Art. After three years at the Slade he won a Prix de Rome which took him to Northern Europe for six months. He returned to the Slade in 1954 as a post-graduate, but after six months was called up for National Service, which, as Conscientious Objector, he spent doing building work and running a small holding. He also taught pottery four nights a week at a Women’s Institute. In 1956, he first exhibited with the London Group and in 1961 had his first solo exhibition at the Beaux-Arts Gallery, London, where his extremism and his concern with the structure and stability of images began to draw critical attention. In the same year he began part-time teaching at the Slade and at Camberwell. In 1987 he was invited to teach at the Hangzhou Fine Art Academy in China and in 1991 was appointed a Trustee of the National Gallery in London.
Further reading:
Euan Uglow Controlled Passion, Abbot Hall Art Gallery 2003 (texts by Richard Kendall and Martin Gayford)
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/sep/01/guardianobituaries