figloop.pages.dev

Merlyn evans biography

    •

Meryln Evans was born in Cardiff, Wales; he studied at Glasgow School of Art and won a travelling scholarship which took him to Germany and Scandinavia. His first etchings date from 1930, he exhibited at the London Surrealist Exhibition in 1936. In the late 1940s he began to make colour prints incorporating combinations of etching, aquatint, engraving and drypoint. In 1957, having learnt the technique in Paris shortly before, he used the sugar-lift aquatint process to produce a suite of six large scale prints, Vertical Suite in Black, which were published the following year by the St George’s Gallery, London.

Out of Print British Printmaking 1946-1976, The British Council 1994

Further reading:
The Graphic work of Merlyn Evans; A Retrospective Exhibition, introduction by Robert Erskine, essay by Bryan Robertson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1972

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

      •

    Do you know someone who would love this resource?
    Tell them about it...

    The Refugees 1946

    Merlyn Oliver Evans (1910–1973)

    Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales

    British painter, printmaker, and sculptor. He was born in Cardiff and grew up in Glasgow, where he studied at the School of Art from 1927 to 1930. During this period he was already working as an abstract artist. A travelling scholarship then took him to France, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, after which he continued his studies at the *Royal College of Art in London and from 1934 to 1936 in Paris, where he worked in *Hayter's printmaking studio and met many leading artists, including *Kandinsky and *Mondrian. His work at this time was influenced by both *Cubism and *Surrealism, although the most important models were Wyndham *Lewis and the now almost forgotten *Vorticist sculptor Lawrence Atkinson (1873–1931). He took part in the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936, showing The Conquest of Time (1934, Tate), not in fact an especially Surreal work, inspired by the image of a kingfisher ‘stil

      •

    Merlyn Evans

    Merlyn Evans was born in Cardiff, but grew up in Glasgow. He attended Glasgow School of Art (1927-1930), where he did his first abstract paintings. Inspired by visits to Paris he went on to The Royal College of Art (1931–1933), despite discouragement, where he held a scholarship. After various travels and military service he settled in London, which was to remain the base for his work until his death. In London Evans joined the Surrealist Group, even though his work had more cubist elements than surrealist. In 1938 he moved to South Africa to teach at the Natal Technical College in Durban, where he lived until he became an engineer with the South African army in North Africa and Italy (1942–5). He then began to paint anti-war subjects, depicting violent allegories of World War II in a style that was an idiosyncratic development of Vorticism. In part abstract, and in lurid colours, these were sometimes based on specific incidents. Evans's large post-war paintings were often based on the patterns made by crowds of people and were intended as a public art on

Copyright ©figloop.pages.dev 2025