Born on April 21, 1912, is an American photojournalist and was the first female member of the Magnum Photos agency in 1955.  Arnold was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to immigrant Russian-Jewish parents. Her interest in becoming a photographer began in 1946, when he worked for a photo-finishing plant in New York City.  Arnold is best known for her benevolent, intimate images of actress Marilyn Monroe on the set of Monroe's last (1961) film, The Misfits, but she took many photos of Monroe from 1951 onwards. An exhibition of previously unseen photos of Monroe was displayed at the Halcyon Gallery in London in May 2005. Marilyn trusted Arnold more than any other photographer, a relationship that is well-documented. Due to Arnold's sympathetic approach towards her subjects and protective nature of them afterwards, she is able to capture a closeness that is not easy for most others to capture.  Not only has Arnold photographed VIPs such as Queen Elizabeth II, Malcolm X, and Joan Crawford, she has travelled extensively around the world, photographing in China, Russia, South Africa, and Afghanistan. In 1980, she had her first solo exhibition which featured her photographic work in China at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. She also did a series of portraits of American Presidents' wives.  p
 

1912 - 2004  In middle age, Barns-Graham (always Willie to those who knew her) was a worried woman, depressed by personal problems and, as a painter, oppressed by sexist, classist and envious undercurrents in the artistic community of St Ives, Cornwall, where she had made he home since 1940.  She was a prolific and prominent British abstract painter who was a member of the influential St Ives group of artists during the 1940's that included sculptor Barbara Hepworth, and who continued to paint into her 90's.  p
 

1923 - 2006  London born  Sandra Blow studied at St Martin's School of Art from 1941 to 1946, at the Royal Academy Schools from 1946 to 1947, and subsequently at the Academy of Fine Arts, Rome from 1947 to 1948.  She travelled to Spain and Fence in the late 1940s, worked in Cornwall for a yea form 1957 to 1958 and went on to teach at the Royal College of Art from 1960.  Blow’s first solo exhibition was at Gimpel Fils in 1951, where she continued to exhibit regularly until the mid-sixties.  Further solo shows were held at the New Art Centre, London (1966, 68, 71, 73), at Clare College, Cambridge (1968) and at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (Diploma Gallery) in 1979. More recently, a retrospective of he work was held in the Sackler Galleries at the Royal Academy in 1994.  Blow also participated in many international group exhibitions from an early stage.  These included; 'Young British Painters', at The Art Club, Chicago (1957), which subsequently toured the USA for two yeas; the Venice Biennale — Young Artists Section (1958); 'Aspects of New British Art', British Council touring exhibition of Australia and New Zealand (1967); and 'St Ives' held at the Tate Gallery, London (1985). Her work has been regularly included in group exhibitions at the Tate Gallery, St Ives, and in other shows throughout the UK.  Blow’s awards include joint-winner of the International Guggenheim Award (The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1960), Second Prize Winner in the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition (1961) and the Kon Fey Picture of the Year Award, Royal Academy (1998).  In 1994 her work 'Green and White' was purchased under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest for the Nation.  Among he recent commissions are a glass screen for Heathrow Airport (commissioned by the BAA in 1995), and illustrations for 'Waves on Porthmero Beach', by Alaic Sumner (Wordsworth Books, 1995).  Sandra Blow was appointed Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art in 1973. She lives and works in Cornwall.  Obituary   p
 

Born in London in 1914, Chadwick studied architectural drafting and design following his World War II service as a pilot. He made abstract mobiles and constructions of metal and glass. In the 1950's, he emerged as a sculptor with a singularly distinctive style. Following one-man shows at Gimpel Fils, London, in 1950 and '52, Chadwick was invited to exhibit at the British Pavilion of the 1952 Venice Biennale, a remarkable distinction that set the course for his future. In 1956, Chadwick was astonished to be selected to represent Britain at the XXVIII Venice Biennale, an honour more fitting an artist with a lifetime of achievements. He took home the Biennale's highest honour—the International Prize for sculpture.  During the 1950's, Chadwick was prominent among the group of sculptors who followed in the steps of Henry Moore, and his woks, although largely abstract at this time, began to carry an unmistakable reference to the human figure. responding to the physical limitations of his materials and the techniques of construction, in the 1960's, Chadwick explored hundreds of variations on his recognizable forms, simplifying and refining his figures. His sculpture became more block-like and monumental: he experimented with geometric constructions and assemblages that were rigorously linear and visibly referential. Finally, invariably, Chadwick retuned to the human form. p
 

1919 - 1983 born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, and studied at the local art school and at Bath Academy of Art. He ran the lithography studio at Bath from 1950 until his retirement in 1981. He was a regular exhibitor in international print exhibitions and in 1960 was one of five artists shown in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. His early works seemed derived from both Surrealism and the neo-romantic English landscape school of the1940s. Throughout the 1950s Cliffe's work became more concerned with the relationship between the human figure and the landscape and in 1959 a suite of lithographs on this theme was published by the St George's Gallery, London. p
 

1919 - 1999.  She did not seek publicity. Her friends respected her privacy, enjoying her work, her gaiety and her humour.  1938 enrolled at the Chelsea School of Art whose teachers  included Graham Sutherland, Julian Trevelyan and Henry Moore.  From 1956 to 1969 she taught there and from 1966 to 1997 she taught at the Wimbledon School of Art.  From 1946 onwards she studied at Camberwell and had her first exhibitions at the Leger Gallery in 1947. By the time of her death in 1999 she had had twenty-six solo exhibitions and been seen in over fifty group shows. p
 

1889-1963 Born to a wealthy family in a small town near Paris. Cocteau's father committed suicide when he was about 10 yeas old.  In 1900, he entered a private school and was expelled in 1904. After his expulsion from school, Cocteau ran away to Marseilles where he lived in the "red light distinct" under a false name. Police discovered him in Marseilles and returned him to his uncle's care.  At the age of 17 or 18, Cocteau fell in love with an actress named Madeleine Calie.  She was 30 years old at the time.  She later ended the relationship.  In 1908, Cocteau associated himself with Edouard de Max. De Max was a reigning tragedian of the Paris stage. De Max encouraged Cocteau to write and on April 4 of that year entered the Theatre Femina for the premiere of the young writers poetry.  In 1909, Cocteau met the Russian impressario Sergey Daighilev who ran the Ballets Russes.  Daighilev encouraged Cocteau to venture into the genre of ballet.  The Russian challenged Cocteau to "Ettonne-moi" (Surprise me).  The remark pushed Cocteau to write the libretto for an exotic ballet called Le Dieu Bleu. During this time, Cocteau also met composer Igor Stravinsky who was working on his composition The Rite of Spring.  In the spring of 1914, Cocteau visited Stravinsky in Switzerland.  It was during this visit that Cocteau finished his first book, Le Potomark.   In 1917, he met Pablo Picasso. Cocteau and Picasso went to Rome where they met up with Diaghilev.  At this point, Cocteau helped prepare the ballet Parade.  Picasso designed the sets, Erik Satie wrote the music, and the ballet was choreographed by Leonide Massine.  In 1918, Cocteau formed an intimate friendship with a 15 year old novelist, Raymond Radiguet. Radiguet strongly influenced Cocteau's art and life. The young writer would die form typhoid fever in 1923. His death was a severe blow to Cocteau and drove him to use opium.  During Cocteau's recovery form his opium addiction, the artist created some of his most important works including the stage play Orphee, the novel, Les Enfants Terribles, and many long poems.   During the next 15 years the artist's work lapsed.  One reason for this was his recurring addiction to opium.  His return to work in the early 1940's was primarily due to the influence of his close friend, actor Jean Marais.  In 1945, Cocteau directed his adaptation of La Belle et la Bete (Beauty and the Beast).  The film marked a triumphant return of Cocteau to the screen. Marais starred in the film as the Beast, Beauty's suitor, and the Prince.  In the late 1940's, Cocteau adapted two of his plays to film; The Eagle with Two Heads and The Storm Within.  In 1950, Cocteau directed the film Orpheus which again stared Marais. This time the theme evolves around a poet beset by artistic and romantic rivals. When his wife dies, Orpheus descends to Hell to rescue he. In Hell, Orpheus' fate is determined before a tribunal.  Also in 1950, Cocteau used his artists' eye to decorate the Villa Santo Sospi in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferat and begin a series of graphic works.  In 1954, on the death of his fiend Collette, the novelist, Cocteau took he place in the Belgian Academy.  In 1955, he was elected to the French Academy.  In 1959, Cocteau made his last film as a director, The Testament of Orpheus.  The elaborate home movie stars Cocteau and also features cameos from many celebrities including Pablo Picasso, Yul Brynner and Jean-Pierre Leraud.  The artist died of a heat attack at age 74 at his chateau in Milly-la-Foret on October 11, 1963 after hearing the news of the death of Edith Piaf.   p
 

Born 1953, Glossop, Derbyshire, UK.  Elected RA 2001. Studied at Goldsmith’s College, London from 1971 to 1974 and the Royal College of Art, London from 1974 to 1977. Visiting Lecturer at the Royal College of Art and City & Guilds of London Art School since 1998.  Cooper's first solo exhibition was held in 1979 at the Air Galley, London. Subsequent exhibitions were held throughout the UK including Blond Fine Art, London (1982, 1983 and 1985), Artspace Gallery, Aberdeen (1985), Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (1986) and Artsite Gallery, Bath (1987). equal exhibitions of her work were held at Benjamin Rhodes Gallery from 1988 and at Art First, London from 1998.  Cooper has also participated in many group exhibitions, including 'New Contemporaries', in 1974 and 1976, 'Hayward Annual', in 1982, the 'John Moores Liverpool Exhibition', in 1986, and 'New British Painting', held at the Contemporary Arts Centre, Cincinnati, in the United States. Among the more recent group exhibitions which have included her work are 'Contemporary Art', at the Courtauld Institute, London (1993), 'Spirit on the Staircase: 100 Yeas of Print Publishing', at the CA, V & A, London (1996-7) and 'Private View', at The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh (1998). Eileen Cooper lives and works in London.  p
 

Sonia Delaunay 1885 - 1979 Emigrated form Russia to Paris in 1905, joining Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Rouault, and Vlaminck in the remaking of art in the early moments of the Post-Impressionist era. She married Robert Delaunay in 1910, and joined with him in the development of Orphism, a movement based in Cubism but determined to bring new lyricism and colour to the rather severe works of Picasso and Braque. During the 1920s, she focused upon bringing this new artistic lyricism into the world of high fashion, transforming fabrics for fashion into a moveable artistic feast. In the 1930s, she returned to a renewed focus on painting, joining the Abstraction-Creation group in seeking to create an art based upon non-representational elements, often geometrical, and continuing to focus on colour as central to painting. The group was trans-national, and including among its members Barbara Hepworth, Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. In 1963 she donated 58 of he own woks and 40 of he husband's to the Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris, and became the first woman ever to be exhibited at the Louvre during her lifetime.   p
 

1939 -  1993, Thurlow, Suffolk. Attended Guildford Art School and Chelsea School of Art where she studied under Professor Bernard Meadows.  Her Collectors include: Museum of Modern Art, New York and National Gallery of Australia, Melbourne.  Dame Elizabeth. Dame Elizabeth Frink was one of Britain's most acclaimed sculptors.  Her fame as a sculptor overshadowed the fact that she was also an accomplished print-make although her output of etchings and lithographs was under 100 prints.  Her favourite themes were bids and animals.  Amongst the most important of her prints were the series depicting man and horse, and she also produced a set of illustrations to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. p
 

1951 - , St Ives.  Cardiff College of Art 1970 - 73, Lecturer Falmouth School of Art 1980 - 82, Royal Academy Summer Show 1999, 2001. Collections John Moores, Kasse Foundation New York, Nuffield Trust.  Anthony lives in Morvah and works from a studio in Penzance.  He is the son of Sir Terry Frost RA.  p
 

1915 - 2003, Leamington Spa. Terry Frost first began to paint as a prisoner of war.  Returning to England, he received an ex-serviceman's grant and attended Camberwell School of Art, London from 1947 to 1950.  He went on to teach art the Bath Academy of Art at Corsham Court from 1952, and was the Gregory Fellow at Leeds University 1954 to 1956, teaching at Leeds School of Art from 1956 to 1957.  He was made Artist in residence at the Fine Art Department of Newcastle University in 1964, became a full time lecturer at the Department of Fine Art, Reading University 1965, and went on to become Professor of Painting at the University of Reading from 1977 to 1981.  Frost's first one-man show was held at the Leicester Galleries in 1952.  He continued to exhibit regularly in London and his fist international one-man show was held in 1961 at the Betha Schaeffer Galley, New York.  Further solo exhibitions include the ICA, London (1971) and the Serpentine Galley, London (1976) organised by the Arts Council and South West Arts, touring to Newcastle, Bristol, Leeds, Chester, Birmingham and Plymouth. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Mayo Galley, London in 1990 and in 2000 a major retrospective, ‘Terry Frost: Six Decades’, was held at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.  Frost also participated in many group shows since 1953, and his work is held in many corporate and private collections throughout the world.  Terry Frost was elected Royal Academician 1992 and received a knighthood in 1998.  He lived and worked in Newlyn, Cornwall.  p
 

Born 1921 in Neuilly-sur-seine, France, Gilot was honoured with her fist exhibition of paintings in Paris in 1943.  It was at this exhibition that she met Pablo Picasso, beginning a personal and artistic relationship that was to last over a decade. During these years Gilot was part of the circle of French intelligentsia which included such figures as Gertrude Stein, Marc Chagall, Joan Miro and Simone de Beauvoir.  However, it was he friendship with Henri Matisse that most influenced her work and her aesthetic sensibility, deepening her commitment to painting.  Gilot is also an established writer whose books include "Life with Picasso" and "Interface: The Artist and the Mask". Her artwork is currently presented in over a dozen museums in France and the United States.  p
 

1920 - Leeds, Heron lived in Cornwall for several years as a child, and he eventually settled in Zennor, St. Ives, taking over Nicholson's studio in 1958. He studied at Slade School of Fine Art, 1937-39.  During the Second Wold War he was a conscientious objector and so worked on the land and also spent a short time at Leach Pottery in St. Ives.  He retuned to painting in 1945 and had his first solo show at Redfern Gallery in 1947.  He was also an increasingly important art critic, writing for New English Weekly, New Statesmen and Nation, and for Arts, which was based in New York.  He also taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts 1953-56. In the mid-1950s Heron began to paint abstract works, and became one of Britain's strongest links with the New York Abstract Expressionists.  His works using vibrant colour soon became unmistakeable, and from 1960 were shown in several solo exhibitions at Bertha Schaefer Galley, New York and widely elsewhere aboard.  Retrospectives of his work have been held at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1972, the Barbican Art Gallery in 1985 and the Tate Gallery in 1998. His work is held in many major collections, including the Tate Gallery and the V&A.   p
 

Born 1965, Bristol. He grew up in Leeds with his mother, May Bennan, and his stepfather. He took a foundation course at Leeds School of Art before applying for college. He was rejected by St. Martin's but moved to London in 1986 when he was accepted onto the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths College, graduating in 1989.  He said he chose this course as it was not specifically based to just painting, or just sculpture.  While at Goldsmith's he curated the Freeze exhibition in 1988. This show had other young artists, but Hirst was the main drive. He converted an abandoned London Docklands warehouse into an exhibition. People thought he was too big for his boots, he was curating with his own work and he was still a student. However he managed to pull it off, and this impressive action made him noteworthy. It was from exhibitions like this that he started to establish himself in the art world. Hirst was thrust into fame with events such as when "Away Form The Flock" was vandalised when someone poured ink into the formaldehyde preserving a sheep. This turned it into one of the most famous contemporary works in Britain. This took place in 1994 in an exhibition Hirst helped set up, "Some Went Mad, Some an Away". He is recognised as part of the Contemporary 'Brit' art scene, but he has had art shown throughout Europe and America. p
 

1893 - 1979 Born the son of landscape artist Alfred Hitchens. Educated at the Bedales School followed by a year of training at the St. Johns Wood School of Art.  He grew up in Berkshire, moved to New Zealand for two years after suffering form a severe illness and retuned to England where he lived for the remained of his life. In 1922, he became a founding member of Seven and Five Society.  In that same year he had his first one-man exhibition at The Mayer Galley in London.  In 1931, he became a member of The London Group and twenty years later he was awarded the Purchase Prize in the Arts Council Festival of Britain – 60 paintings in 51.  In 1955 his first monograph, written by Patrick Heron, was published and in the following year a retrospective exhibition of his work was arranged by The British Council for the Venice Biennale.  His work in the early thirties came under the influence of Braque.  He contributed to the ‘Objective Abstractions’ at the Zwemmer Galley.  He continued for a short period in producing abstract pictures, i.e. ‘Triangle to Beyond’ in 1936.  From this point on, his work was all painted on traditional seascape format in the form of abstract landscapes. After the bombing of his London home in 1940 he moved to Sussex.  In this period he began to paint figures indoors and outdoors.  Even though he continued to paint nudes in his landscapes, the majority of his works thereafter were abstracted landscapes, recognisable by his brushstrokes and individual sweeps of colour. p
 

1937, Bradford.  Hockney had formal training at Bradford College of Art, and then the Royal College, when his painting began to attract the attention of critics and collectors.  He was associated with the Pop Art movement but in his experimentation with different styles he showed an astonishing originality.  In 1963 he visited the U. S. A. which led to his series of etchings "The Rakes Progress".  His printing career took off after he visited California when he worked at the studios of Gemini GEL in making remarkable etchings and lithographs which included meticulous portraiture, still life's and stylised landscapes.  After working in California for many years he has now returned to live and work in London.  He is a truly international figure with a prominent place in 20th Century art.  p
 

1932 - , London.  Hodgkin studied 1949 - 50 at Camberwell School of Art and from 1950 - 54 at Bath Academy, Corsham alongside William Scott, Gillian Ayres and Henry Cliffe.  He draws his inspiration from personal experiences and is renowned for his masterful use of colour. In 1964 he made his first visit to India and became interested in Indian miniature paintings, about which he has become a world renowned expert.  From 1966 to 1972 he taught at Chelsea School of Art and was a Trustee of the Tate Gallery from 1970 to 1976.  From 1978 to 1985 he was also a trustee of the National Gallery in London.  In 1984 he represented Britain at the XLI Venice Biennale. The popularity of his paintings and prints grew and in 1985 he was awarded the Tuner Prize. In 1992 he was knighted and in 2000 given an Honorary Doctorate of Letters, Oxford University.  p Article Observer 2006
 

1934 - , Sheffield, England. John Hoyland studied at Sheffield College of Art, 1951-6 and from 1956-60 studied at the Royal Academy Schools, London. he went on to two year teaching spells at Hornsey, Croydon and Chelsea Schools of Art.  Has had a life long association with print making and in 1979 began colour etching at Kelpa Studio, London.  Lives and works in London, Wiltshire and Italy.  p
 

1962 - , Kent, England, Elected RA 2001 Gary Hume graduated form Goldsmith’s College, London, in 1988. His first group exhibitions were held that year at Kasten Schubert Ltd, London and in 'Freeze: Part II', at Surrey Docks, London.  Following his fist solo show at Kasten Schubert Ltd, London, in 1989, he rapidly established an international reputation, exhibiting in numerous significant group exhibitions throughout the 1990s. He was short listed for the Tuner Prize in 1996 and was winner of the Jerwood Painting Prize in 1997. p
 

1928 - Born in New Castle, Indiana. He graduated from Arsenal Technical High School, Indianapolis in 1942 and had his first one-man show of watercolours. Indiana's work has evolved into hard-edged graphic images of words, logos and typographic forms, earning him a reputation as one of the county's leading contemporary artists. In 1945 he attended Saturday classes at the John Heron Art Institute, studying under Edwin Fulwinder. Though he received a scholarship to this institution in 1946, he entered the Amy Air Corps instead. While serving in the Amy he attended classes at Syracuse University and studied under Oscar Weissbruch at the Munson-Williams-Procto Institute.  From 1949 to 1953 he attended the School of the Art Institute, Chicago.  He then completed his BFA requirements at the university of Edinburgh while on a travel fellowship, and later moved to New York. In the mid 1950s he was living near New York when he began doing hard-edged paintings; the first ones based on the doubled form of the ginkgo leaf, a motif that continued for several years. In the early 1960s he did his first constructions of junk wood and weathered iron. These works, at fist severely geometric, combine metal and wood. In the early 1960s several of his works were purchased by major museums and collectors and his pieces were included in many exhibitions, including his first one-man show in 1962 at the Stable Gallery, New York. In 1964 he collaborated with Andy Warhol on the film EAT and in the same year received his fist public commission, a work for the exterior of the New York State Pavilion at the New York Wold's Fair -- a 20-foot EAT Sign.  In 1967 he exhibited one of his few figurative works, Mother and Father (1963-67, collection of the artist), at the Ninth Sao Paulo Bienal, Brazil.  p
 

1936-1997 Born Preston, England. Painter, sculptor, collage and graphic artist. St. Martin's School of Art 1957-61, Royal College of Art 1961-64 and British Academy, Rome 1966. Ingham engages with the crucial period of Cubism from 1912-1916 and the work of Picasso, Braque and Gis in particular. His work concentrates on both real and implied space within the surface of the picture. This often entails relief or collage. In later life he took to interpreting his ideas in thee-dimensions with similar subjects of still life cast in to relief sculptures. At times Ingham's work is deeply reminiscent of the work of Ben Nicholson both in terms of subject-matter and treatment. p
 

Albert Irvin studied at Northampton School of Art from 1940 to 1941, before serving as a navigator in the RAF during Wold War II. He went on to study at Goldsmiths College, where he later retuned to teach between 1962 and 1983. He has also taught at art colleges throughout Britain.  Irvin's first solo exhibition was held in 1960 at 57 Gallery in Edinburgh and he subsequently has had many one-man shows internationally and at the Gimpel Fils Gallery in London. A major retrospective of his work from 1960 to 1989 was held at the Serpentine Gallery in 1990. He continues to exhibit regularly at Gimpel Fils, London.  Irvin was awarded a Travel Award to America by the Arts Council in 1968 and later received an Arts Council Major Award. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1998 and lives and works in London.  Paul Moorhouse, Tate curator and author of the book 'Albert Irvin: Life to Painting', wrote of him: 'even to those familiar with his work, seeing a new painting by Irvin can be an extraordinary experience akin to discovering a young, energetic artist in the first flush of ambition. Given the force of its restless energy, its freshness and the sense it communicates of an artist in love with his chosen activity, it is even more surprising to realise that this is the work of an artist in his late seventies'.  p
 

Born 1958, France, son of Elizabeth Frink, educated in France and England, studied at Chelsea College of Art. 1985-86 Association of Illustrators Gallery, London, Cambridge Animation Festival, Kettle’s Yard; Air Galley, London. 1988 Solo show Out of the Blue, Association of Illustrators Gallery, London. Beaux Arts - Bath, Selected Summer Show. 1989 Solo Show, Beaux Arts - Bath International Contemporary Art Fair, Olympia, London, Bath Contemporary Art Fair. 1990 Solo show, Beaux Arts - Bath, Solo show, St Judes Gallery, London, Mixed show at Black Bull Gallery, London, for Prisoners Abroard. 1991 The Contemporary Fine Art Gallery, Eton, Solo show, St Judes Gallery, London. 1992 Beaux Arts - Bath. 1992-95 International Contemporary Art Fair , Business Design Centre, London. 1998 Beaux Arts - Bath.  p
 

Allen Jones studied at Hornsey College of Art form 1955 to 1959 and the Royal College of Art from 1959 to 1960.  Between 1961 - 83 he taught at Croydon College of Art; Chelsea School of Art; University of South Florida; Hochschule fur Bildenden Kunst, Hamburg; University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, Irvine; Hochschule de Kunste, Berlin.  Jones was appointed a Trustee of the British Museum from 1990 - 99.  From the early 60s, his international reputation was established as a painter, printmaker and sculptor.  Over the past 40 years his work has been exhibited continuously in Britain, Europe, North and South America, Australia, Japan and China in both solo and group exhibitions. There have been three major retrospectives of his work. The first at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, travelling to the Serpentine Gallery, London and to four venues in Germany.  The second at the ICA, London, which travelled to the Fruit Market, Edinburgh and Anolfini, Bristol, and the third at the Barbican, London, which was subsequently toured worldwide by the British Council.   In recent years sculpture commissions have formed a major part of Jones’s activity and include: Liverpool Garden Festival; Frederick Weisman Foundation, Los Angeles; Cotton’s Atrium, London; London Heathrow Terminal 4; London Docklands Development Board; Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, London; Swire Properties, Taikoo Place, Hong Kong; Goodwood Sculpture Pak, Sussex; Chatsworth, Derbyshire; GlaxoSmithKline World HQ, London.  He has also undertaken numerous private commissions in both painting and sculpture.  Jones’s designs for stage and television include: 'Oh Calcutta!', for Kenneth Tynan; 'Manner wir kommen', West Deutsche Rundfunk; 'Understanding Opera', LWT; 'Satie/Cinema', Ballet Rambert; and 'Signed in Red', Royal Ballet.  Jones lives and works in London and Oxfordshire. p
 

1932 - 2007 Born Cleveland, Ohio, US. Kitaj studied at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York from 1950 to 1951, at the Academy of Fine Art, Vienna form 1951 to 1952, at the Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford from 1953 to 1959 and at the Royal College of Art, London form 1959 to 1961. Kitaj went on to teach at Camberwell School of Art form 1962 to 1966 and at the University of California, Berkeley form 1970 to 1971. He was Artist in residence at Dartmouth College, USA from 1978 to 1979. Kitaj's fist one-man show was held at the Marlborough New London Gallery in 1963. This quickly led to a succession of solo exhibitions throughout the world including the Marlborough-Geson Gallery, New York in 1965; Cleveland Museum of Art in 1967; the Icon Galley, Birmingham in 1977; and FIAC, Paris in 1978. He continued to exhibit regularly with Marlborough Fine Art in London, New York and Zurich. retrospectives of his work were held at the Hirshhon Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC in 1981 and at the Tate Gallery, London in 1994. His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions from 1958 to the present day. Kitaj was elected Royal Academician in 1991 (AA in 1984), and in 1997 moved to Los Angeles, where he now lives and works. Obituary Guardian 23/10/07 p
 

1918-1964 English painter and sculptor. After private lessons with Borlase Smart (1881–1947) in 1936, he trained at the Penzance School of Art (1936–7). In 1937 he met Adrian Stokes, who is thought to have given him his first introduction to contemporary painting and sculpture. Lanyon's work is central to any assessment of St ives painting, since he experienced at first hand the invigorating influence of Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo, when they moved to St Ives in 1939. Private lessons with Nicholson led Lanyon to make reliefs and constructions. Lanyon also made a number of constructions directly inspired by Gabo's poetic spatial forms, or indirectly perhaps also by Hepworth's more figurative curving forms. After World War II he was actively involved with the Crypt group and the Penwith School of Art. p
 

Blek Le Rat (Xavier Prou) was born on 15th November 1951 in Paris. From 1971 - 76 he studied etching, lithography, and painting at the "Ecole nationals superieure des Beaux-arts de Paris". From 1976 - 82 he studied architecture at "Unite pedagogique d'architecture No 6" in Paris.  From 1981 to 2006 his work has focused on urban art in different cities of the world.  He is the pioneer of stencil graffiti art, introducing the technique into graffiti in Paris in 1981 and now followed by many artists across the world including Banksy here in the UK.  He introduced to the urban art landscape the concept of creating life size figures of people. He is thought by many to be the father of stencil graffiti as an art form.  He did not want to imitate the American graffiti that he had seen originally in New York in 1971.  He wanted to have his own street style.  He began to spray some small rats because rats are the only wild living animals in cities and only rats will survive when the human race will have disappeared and died out.  Here is a pdf copy of an article which appeared in The Big Issue on 6th November 2006 - page1 and page 2   p
 

1923 - 1999  Born in New York City, Lichtenstein studied briefly at the Art Students League, then enrolled at Ohio State University. After serving in the army from 1943 to 1946, he returned to Ohio State to get a master's degree and to teach. In 1951, Lichtenstein came back to New York City and had his first one-man show. He also continued to teach. Through the 1950s, Lichtenstein used the basic techniques of abstract expressionism, but incorporated into his compositions such themes as cowboys and Indians and paper money. In 1961, however, while at Douglass College, impressed by the work of colleague Allan Kapow, he turned to the use of comic-strip and cartoon figures by which he is known today. Flatten... sandfleas (1962, Museum of Modern Art) was the first important example of his new style. Primary colours--red, yellow and blue, heavily outlined in black--became his favourites. Occasionally he used green. Instead of shades of colour, he used the benday dot, a method by which an image is created, and its density of tone modulated in printing. Sometimes he selected a comic-strip scene, recomposed it, projected it onto his canvas and stencilled in the dots. "I want my painting to look as if it had been programmed," Lichtenstein explained. Despite the fact that many of his paintings are relatively small, Lichtenstein's method of handling his subject matter conveys a sense of monumental size. His images seem massive. In 1962 he turned to the work of artists such as Picasso, Mondrian, and even Monet as inspiration for his work. In the mid-1960s, he also painted sunsets and landscapes in his by-now familiar style. In addition, he has designed ceramic tableware and graphics for mass production. p
 

Scottish performance artist and painter. He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1961 to 1963, and from 1963 to 1966 at St Martin's School of Art, London, where he and others rebelled against what appeared to be the formalist academicism of his teachers, among whom were Anthony Caro and Phillip King. In 1965 he abandoned conventional studio production in favour of impermanent sculptures using materials such as water, along with performances of a genially satirical nature directed against the art world. In Pose work for Plinths I (1971; London, Tate), a photographic documentation of one such performance, he used his own body to parody the poses of Henry Moore's celebrated reclining figures. When in 1972 he was offered an exhibition at the Tate Gallery, he opted, with obviously mocking intent, for a ‘retospective' lasting only one day.  In 1971 McLean established Nice Style, billed as ‘The Wold's First Pose Band', while teaching at Maidstone College of Art. With them and in other collaborative performances (Academic Board, 1975; Soy! A Minimal Musical in Parts, 1977; The Masterwork: Award Winning Fishknife, 1979), he continued to use humour to confront the pretensions of the art world and wide social issues such as the nature of bureaucracy and institutional politics. From the mid-1970s, while continuing to mount occasional performances, McLean turned increasingly to painting, in a witty and subversive parody of current expressionist styles and to ceramics. p
 

1939 - Liverpool 1957-62 University of St. Andrews, 1963-66 Courtauld Institute, 1981 Emma lake Workshop (guest artist), 1985 Artist in residence, University of Edinburgh. Selected Public Collections Tate Gallery, London, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Arts Council of Great Britain, Contemporary Art Society, Scottish Arts Council, British Council, Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries. "Increasingly regarded as the foremost abstract painter of his generation." The Independent on Sunday.   p
 

1908 - , Chesham, Surrey.  Died 1998.  From 1927 - 1931 attended evening classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. In 1937 he, alongside William Coldstream, opened a teaching studio later known as the Euston Road School.  In 1947 he saw a return to the abstract style of painting which continued for the rest of his career.  His work is in major collections throughout the world.  p
 

1913 - 1989 Born in Scotland and was educated in Northern Ireland (Belfast School of Art) and in England at the Royal Academy School from 1931 to 1935. After leaving the RA he and his wife, who was the painter May Lucas, lived in France and opened a school of painting in Pont-Aven. On the outbreak of WW2 they left France for Dublin and later came to England where Scott taught at the Bath Academy of Art until he joined the army in 1942, serving in the Royal Engineers, where he leaned printing techniques. In 1946 he was back at the Bath Academy where he became senior painting master. In 1956 he gave up teaching to concentrate on his own career as a painter and print-make. He spent most summers at St. Ives in Cornwall, joining the colony of English abstract artists centred there. He visited New York in 1953, meeting de Kooning, Rothko and Pollock. He became the leading British abstract expressionist. A retrospective of his work was shown at the Venice Bienalle in 1958, followed by others in Belfast in 1963 and at the Tate Gallery, London in 1972. He was elected as a member of the Royal Academy in 1984. Since his death in 1989 further retrospective shows have been held and his woks are in important public and private collections world-wide.  recent Daily Telegraph article about auction prices  p
 

Joe Tilson initially worked as a carpenter and joiner from 1944 - 46, before carrying out his National Service in the RAF until 1949.  He went on to study at St Martin's School of Art, London from 1949 - 52 and at the Royal College of Art, London from 1952 - 55 where he received the Rome Prize, taking him to live in Italy in 1955.  He returned to London in 1957, and from 1958 - 63 he taught at St Martin's School of Art, and subsequently at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, Kings College, Newcastle upon Tyne, The School of Visual Arts, New York and the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste, Hamburg.   Tilson’s fist one-man shows were held at the Marlborough Gallery, London in 1962 and at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool in 1963.  In 1977 he joined the Waddington Galleries and is at present presented by Theo Waddington Fine Art, the Alan Cristea Gallery and by Giò Maconi Galleries.  His work first gained international exposure at the XXXII Venice Biennale, leading to his fist retrospective at the Boyman’s Museum, Rotterdam in 1964.  Further retrospective exhibitions were held at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1979 and at the Anolfini Gallery, Bristol in 1984.  He has continued to exhibit regularly in solo shows throughout the world and had a major retrospective, ‘Joe Tilson: Pop to Present’ in 2002.  Among Tilson’s awards are the Gulbenkian Foundation Prize in 1960 and the Grand Prix d’Honneur, Biennale of Ljubljana in 1996, the year in which he was invited to paint the banner for the Palio, Siena.  He was elected Royal Academician in 1991 (AA 1985) and lives and works in London and Cortona, Tuscany.  p
 

William Tillyer's work has been shown frequently in London and New York since 1970.  Admired by fellow artists and collectors, it has mystified critics, even those eager to praise him.  Why does his work keep changing?  Why does each new phase seem to contradict and undermine the last?  Why doesn't he establish a brand image and stick by it?  Much of his art is about the beauty of the world, of landscapes, still life and buildings; it can also be sublimely beautiful in its use of colour, brushstrokes and pictorial constructions, or dramatic in its size and contrasts. His thoughts are about how art communicates as much as what.  William Tillyer was born in 1938 in Middlesborough. Trained in printmaking, Tillyer has evolved into an astonishingly diverse and talented artist.  His work encompasses everything from prints to collages to watercolours to oil paintings to mixed-media constructions.  Today he is one of Britain's most respected artists, with a still-growing reputation.  p
 

1930 - Following a motorbike accident in 1954, while practising for a Brands Hatch race, Brian Willsher spent six months in plaster. With time on his hands, Willsher used his one free arm to experiment with plaster sculpting. Although he initially trained as an engineer, Willsher’s formative years were spent in various jobs that led to a career as a dental technician. However, a visit to Guernsey in 1956 proved to be a turning point in his life, when Willsher made the decision to quit work and pursue his own creative interests.  Willsher’s first works were large wooden salad bowls, which he sold to Dunns of Bromley, that lead on to lampbases. Huge interest in Willsher’s work followed a Heal’s window display of his lampbases. Working long hours and enlisting an assistant to meet the demand, Willsher’s neighbours soon began to complain about the noise so he invested in a band saw to speed up production. When bored, Willsher would ‘doodle’ using off-cuts and the band saw; in turn, this led to his first series of sculptural work. By realigning dissected pieces, his wooden sculptures took on exploded forms, expanding from the base to form intricate three-dimensional works.  With a continued interest from Heal’s and from Liberty, Willsher began to attract a wider audience. Galleries began to show his work, yet despite his acceptance as a sculptor, in 1968, Customs and Excise denied Willsher’s work fine art status, making it subject to the customary forty percent manufacturers’ tax levied upon household decorations. This attracted widespread media attention, with both Henry Moore and Herbert Read rallying to Willsher’s defence. The Guardian published an article entitled, “When is a sculpture not a sculpture”, that objected to the Customs insidious claim that, “It is precisely the ornamental qualities of the sculpture that make it taxable.” Grading Willsher’s work as birdbaths and sundials led the Guardian to argue that, “The two piece abstract Henry Moore sculpture on St. Stephens Green is, in fact, a Garden Ornament.” As a reaction to this furore, Willsher priced a piece of his work showing at the Royal Academy of Arts at just £50. In turn, a Brooke Street gallery showing Willsher’s work found this intolerable and threw him out.  After this period of intense debate and media scrutiny, Willsher backed away from exhibiting and instead sold his work from market stalls in Hampstead, Covent Garden and St. Martins in the Field. Willsher has rarely exhibited, though in the 1980s he showed at the Tate Britain. With exhibitions at the Belgrave and Boundary galleries in the 1990s, and individual projects for hospitals, interest in his work has fuelled demand at auctions and with collectors. Rank Zerox once commissioned 150 of his peg puzzles for a marketing campaign. The puzzles were posted out to prospective clients with one of the pegs missing, the idea being that they should attend the event by invitation to receive the outstanding peg. A neat piece of marketing, although I can’t help but wonder how many incomplete puzzles and lonesome pegs there could be in office storage cupboards. To this day, Willsher is still “doodling three dimensionally” in the South London house he bought in the 1950s. His workshop is a fabulous place; an ingenious sanding machine, built and developed through the years, together with a collection of band saws and saw dust provide an insight to years of experiment, unfinished projects sit awaiting refreshed inspiration, the room poised to welcome the creation of new ‘Things’.  p