Alfred Wallis

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Two sailboats with 'BH' on the sails (no year)
Noah's Ark (no year)
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Alfred Wallis (born August 18, 1855 in Devonport , Plymouth ; died August 29, 1942 in Madron ) was a British artist of naive painting .

Life

Alfred Wallis grew up in Devonport and Penzance and at the age of nine became a cabin boy in merchant shipping in the North Atlantic and deep-sea fishing. After his marriage in 1885, hired local fishing trawlers and worked in Penzance. In 1890 the family moved to St Ives , where he ran a small shop. After the death of his wife in 1920, he began to paint as an autodidact. He used the locally traded ship paints to paint on cheap materials such as cardboard, wooden boards and cans. His pictures spring from his memory, he painted things that he had seen before. The painted pictures were covered on Sundays, as this corresponded to his religious understanding of the ban on pictures .

When the London avant-garde artists Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood opened an artists' colony in St Ives in 1928 , the young artists accepted him as a local original into their circle. Wallis, however, stuck to his naive painting style . He could sell little and died in poverty. Naum Gabo , Adrian Scott Stokes , Margaret Mellis , Bernard Leach and Barbara Hepworth attended his funeral . Gabo wrote on a wreath bow: "The artist to whom nature bestowed the rarest gift: not knowing that he is an artist". The potter Bernard Leach designed Wallis' grave in St Ives.

The first solo exhibition took place posthumously in 1962 in London. The largest collection of his paintings is in the possession of Kettle's Yard , Cambridge . Further works are shown in the Tate St Ives . Norman Levine wrote the short story A Sabbath Walk about him in 1956 .

Exhibitions (selection)

  • Painter of the simple heart , Museum am Ostwall , Dortmund, 1952
  • Alfred Wallis , Piccadilly Gallery, London, July 1962
  • Alfred Wallis , Modern Art Gallery, London, July 10, 2015 to August 8, 2015

literature

  • Wallis, Alfred . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 5 : V-Z. Supplements: A-G . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1961, p. 75 .
  • Volker Dallmeier, Werner Poeschel: Naive art: past and present . Exhibition catalog. Bielefeld: Kunsthalle Bielefeld. 1981, p. 17 f .; P. 128 f.
  • Eric Lister, Sheldon Williams: Twentieth century British naïve and primitive artists . London: Astragal Books, 1977, p. 182 f.
  • Anatole Jakovsky: Lexicon of lay painters from all over the world. Dictionnaire des peintres naïfs du monde entier = Lexicon of the world's naive painters . Basel: Basilius-Presse, 1976, p. 627
  • Oto Bihalji-Merin : The naive of the world . 2nd edition Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1973, p. 92; P. 299
  • E. Mullins: Alfred Wallis. Cornish Primitive Painter . London, 1967

Web links

Commons : Alfred Wallis  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to Eric Lister and Sheldon Williams in Twentieth century British naïve and primitive artists , 1977, p. 182 f., There are no reliable findings about Wallis' youth. For Volker Dallmeier and Werner Poeschel, there is also no evidence that Wallis went to sea at all.
  2. ↑ Quoted from: Volker Dallmeier, Werner Poeschel: Naive Kunst , 1981, p. 18
  3. ^ Alfred Wallis at Modern Art, London , kettlesyard.co.uk
  4. ^ Alfred Wallis in the Tate St Ives , tate.org.uk
personal data
SURNAME Wallis, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British painter
DATE OF BIRTH August 18, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Devonport
DATE OF DEATH August 29, 1942
Place of death Madron (Cornwall)