Malcolm Morley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Malcolm Morley (born June 7, 1931) is an English artist now
living in the United States.
Morley was born in north
London. He had a troubled childhood, and did not discover art
until serving a three-year stint in Wormwood Scrubs prison.
After release, he studied art first at the Camberwell School of
Arts and then at the Royal College of Art (1955–1957), where his
fellow students included Peter Blake and Frank Auerbach. In
1956, he saw an exhibition of contemporary American art at the
Tate Gallery, and began to produce paintings in an abstract
expressionist style.
In 1958, a year after
leaving the Royal College, Morley moved to New York City, met
Barnett Newman, and became influenced by him. He painted a
number of works at this time made up of only horizontal black
and white bands.
He also met Andy Warhol
and Roy Lichtenstein and, influenced in part by them, changed to
a photo-realist style (Morley prefers the phrase super realist).
He often used a grid to transfer photographics images (often of
ships) from a variety of sources (travel brochures, calendars,
old paintings) to canvas as accurately as possible, and became
one of the most noted photo-realists.
In the 1970s, Morley's work began to be more expressionist, and
he began to incorporate collage into his work. Many of his
paintings from the mid-70s, such as Train Wreck (1975), depict
"catastrophes". Later in the decade, he began to use his own
earlier drawings and watercolours as the subject for his
paintings.
In 1984, Morley won the
inaugural Turner Prize. In the 1990s he returned again to a more
precise photo-realist style, often reproducing images from model
aeroplane kits on large canvases.
His most significant
student is his ex-wife, Fran Bull. Malcolm Morley is represented
by Sperone Westwater, New York.
