A retrospective exhibition of original paintings, works on paper and etchings from 1980s - early 2000s.
George Dannatt (1915-2009) was an outstanding and inspirational figure in the story of the St Ives School. He represented a rare breed of cultural polymath: music critic, practising artist, connoisseur, and collector of modern art. His career as an artist spanned more than five decades. The paintings in this exhibition are a retrospective selection dating from 1961-2007 rooted in his observation of the landscape.
George Dannatt's style evolved during this period:
In the early 1960's Dannatt's paintings began as tentative explorations, very lyrical and colour conscious. The images of the 1970's are abstractions, but not purely as the visual representation of subjects are familiar: stone hedges, trees, weather worn rocks, underlying topology and man-made objects.
Throughout this period, he would frequently travel around the Cornish, Dorset and Wiltshire landscape with his sketchbook and camera to hand making notes on colours, shapes and textures to be investigated.
His publication 'One Way of Seeing' (1990), provided a record of these observations through the lens of a camera, giving rise to Dannatt's preference of creating precise geometric arrangements with clean lines and clear colours. These fashioned exquisite, thoughtful abstractions of landscape themes and aligned him to a group of artists inspired by the qualities of the English countryside and coastline, including Terry Frost, John Wells, Bryan Winter and Dennis Mitchell, all of whom were alive to the unique visual appeal of the south and west of England.
The painting "White Hill to Fleet", 2005 is an example of George Dannatt's thought process and practice. This work is based on a very distant view of a stretch of the Fleet and Chesil Bank as George described it: "a scene which one might produce by observing a long distance through half-closed eyes" pinpointing a small area at the top of the painting, and then obscuring the intervening landscape to contribute to the feeling of distance.
Several paintings in this exhibition are named after the Dorset and Cornish landscape, and others are inspired by the Wiltshire countryside near George and Ann Dannatt's home and studio.
Jackie Sarafopoulos, February 2022
