Maurice de sausmarez biography of barack
UMIST: A formative educational environment
My PhD concerns not just the changing experience of post-war education, but the changing places in which it took place and the significance of educational environments, including the incorporation of examples of original and contemporary works of art and design into school buildings. This week I’ve been thinking about an educational environment that has been significant to me, the University of Manchester’s former UMIST campus in Manchester, where I lived as an undergraduate. UMIST is currently subject to a Manchester City Council consultation around a proposed Strategic Regeneration Framework, which would see a loss of the campus’ modernist heritage as well as areas of green space. Manchester Modernist Society is currently encouraging interested parties to comment on and object to the proposals that have suggested in the SRF. Here the comments I submitted:
“I would like to comment on the North Campus as a longstanding-resident and user of the city centre, including as a student, and a visitor to the city centre. As an undergraduate student at the University of Manchester (2005-2008) I spent three years living in Fairfield Hall, part of North Campus, and found it a very attractive and pleasant place to live, and also to undertake student activities. For example, I played in the University of Manchester Fellows Orchestra, which rehearsed in the Renold Building, and performed in the Sackville Building, and as a student and alumni of Manchester University I have also made use of the Joule Library, also based in Sackville Building. I found North Campus a very pleasant place to live as a student John Hoyland emerged as one of Britain’ s leading abstract painters in the 1960’ s. He exhibited in London, New York, Munich, Milan and Montreal. During the 1970’ s Hoyland worked in New York alongside abstract artists including Noland, Poons and Olitski. Hoyland made the transition to abstract painting in his final years as a student at the Royal Academy. His Diploma presentation in 1960 consisted entirely of abstract paintings. The then President of the Royal Academy was shocked and ordered the paintings to be removed from the gallery walls. Fortunately, the Acting Keeper of the Schools defended Hoyland and ensured that he was awarded his Diploma. The art teacher and critic Maurice de Sausmarez discovered a pile of Hoyland’ s paintings in the basement corridor of the Royal Academy and was very impressed. He offered Hoyland a part-time post teaching at Hornsey College of Art which allowed Hoyland to pursue his passion for painting. In 1960 and 1961 Hoyland was one of the youngest artists to exhibit in the Situation exhibitions alongside Harold and Bernard Cohen, William Turnbull, Gillian Ayres, Henry Mundy and Robyn Denny. His works of this period were concerned with geometric forms. In the Autumn of 1961 the Whitechapel Gallery held an exhibition on Mark Rothko which had a profound affect on Hoyland. The carefully constructed abstract paintings from the Situation exhibitions were soon to give way to a more sinuous and organic style of painting with a strong use of colour. Hoyland was fortunate enough to win the support of the curator at the Whitechapel Gallery, Bryan Robertson, who included Hoyland’ s paintings in the successful exhibition The New Generation in 1964. He also helped Hoyland win a travel bursary to New York where Hoyland met and visited the studios of Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman and Rothko. He also met the critic Clement Greenberg and the young painters Greenber I recently made a trip over to Leeds to see a new exhibition of works by Maurice de Sausmarez at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery at the University of Leeds, held to mark the centenary of his birth and continuing until 20 February 2016. De Sausmarez was closely involved in Pictures for Schools, serving on planning and selection committees and selling work through the exhibitions, as well as the Society for Education through Art (SEA). He took over as president of the SEA from 1968, before his early death at the age of 54 in 1969. De Sausmarez also moved in the same kinds of social circles as Nan Youngman and other Pictures for Schools artists, and was a member of the Artists’ International Association (AIA), of which he was chairman in the 1940s, although his widow, the artist and colour specialist Jane de Sausmarez, told me that he didn’t want to have anything to do with politics after the war. I visited Jane in London earlier this year and she told me that he was good friends with Herbert Read and Betty Rea, and admired her as an artist. He also lived in a caravan at Peggy Angus’ home in Firle, Sussex, and made melon and ginger jam in return for paying rent. He was one of the many artistic and intellectual visitors to Firle to be painted by Angus. Jane met Maurice in 1960. She taught in the textiles department one day a week, under Constance Howard, who had malachite green hair. Howard’s work, along with other artists in the department, was very popular at Pict Hazel Weller, Metadata Specialist, writes: Maurice de Sausmarez (1915-1969) is most famous for his contributions to art and art education. His archive, held by the University of Leeds Cultural Collections, reflects these disciplines; however, that is not all that his collection contains. I am going to use this blog to highlight some of the other strengths of the collection, with a focus on a few of the nearly 600 print materials that I have had the privilege to catalogue over the past year. These items reveal other aspects of de Sausmarez’s interests, both professional and personal, and provide a glimpse into the influence such activities might have had on his work. Music and Theatre While living and teaching in London, de Sausmarez was a regular theatre and concert goer, and he kept the programmes from many of these performances. The theatre programmes include plays featuring the prominent actors of the day, such as Peter Ustinov and Alec Guiness, and also new plays by playwrights such as Terence Rattigan and John Osborne. There are a variety of concerts represented in the collection, ranging from the BBC Proms and concerts in aid of the Workers’ Education Association, to Stravinsky conducting his own work at the Royal Festival Hall. Current Affairs The collection also has a wide range of current affairs publications, in the main covering the 1940s-1960s. The majority are in English, but there are a small number of items in other European languages, including Danish and French. These newspapers and magazines cover some of the most momentous events of the mid-twentieth century, from the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II to the assassination of President Kennedy. There are a substantial number of issues of the weekly BBC publication The Listener in the collection, and these in particular give an opportunity to read about events as they happened, such as the ending of the Second World War. The newspapers also contain a variety of publications with a
John Hoyland
Exhibition visit: Maurice de Sausmarez retrospective, Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds