Cecil Collins

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Cecil Collins (March 231908 – June 41989) was an English artist originally associated with the Surrealist movement.

He was born in Plymouth on 23 March 1908 and worked first as a mechanic at a firm based in Plymouth Docks. From 1924 to 1927 he attended Plymouth School of Art. In 1927 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art where he won the William Rothenstein Life Drawing Prize.

From 1951 to 1975 he taught at the Central School of Art.

BBC Radio ran a program about him in 1981 in the Conversations with Artists series, with Edward Lucie-Smith.

He died on 4 June 1989.

In honour of the centenary of his birth, a portrait of Cecil Collins: a mosaic in word form, is forthcoming. "In Celebration of Cecil Collins: Visionary Artist and Educator" consists of reflections by almost a hundred people, including curators, gallery owners, film-makers, writers, critics, musicians, friends, teaching colleagues, models and students. There is also a six months display at Tate Britain from the end of October.

[edit] Exhibitions

• 1935 - Bloomsbury Gallery, London, England
• 1936 - International Surrealist Exhibition - New Burlington Galleries, London, England
• 1942 - Toledo Museum of Fine Art, USA
• 1948 - New Paintings by Cecil Collins - Lefevre Gallery, London, England
• 1950 - New Paintings - Heffer Gallery, Cambridge, England
• 1951 - Leicester Galleries
• 1953 - Society of Mural Painters
• 1953 - Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
• 1954 - Arts Council, London
• 1956 - Leicester Galleries
• 1959 - Whitechapel Gallery, London
• 1961 - Gallery Zygos, Athens, Greece
• 1964 - Carnegie International Exhibition, Pittsburgh, USA
• 1965 - Arthur Tooth & Sons
• 1967 - Crane Kalman Gallery
• 1971 - Britain's Contribution to Surrealism - Hamet Gallery, London, England
• 1972 - Retrospective Exhibition. Drawings, Paintings, Watercolours, Gouaches and Paintings 1936-1968
• 1981 - New Works - Anthony d'Offay, London, England
• 1981 - The Prints of Cecil Collins - Tate Gallery, London, England
• 1983 - Plymouth Arts Centre
• 1984 - Festival Gallery, Aldeburgh
• 1988 - Recent Paintings - Anthony d'Offay, London, England
• 1989 - Tate Gallery, London

[edit] Bibliography

• The Vision of the Fool (Grey Walls Press, 1947)
• Cecil Collins: Painter of Paradise (1979) by Kathleen Raine
• The Quest for the Great Happiness (1988) by William Anderson
• In Celebration of Cecil Collins: Visionary Artist and Educator (2008) compiled and edited by Nomi Rowe

[edit] External links

• Cecil Collins at the Tate Gallery
• Artist's £1m works left to the nation (BBC News - 2 March 2001)
• Eye of the Heart. The paintings of Cecil Collins. 1978. Arts Council England film collection

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