68
57
William Crozier HRHA (1930-2011)
Red Skull
Oil on canvas, 59 x 43cm (23¼ x 17”)
Signed
In the early 1960s, Crozier started to introduce figures into his
landscapes, half skeleton and half man-like creatures, that were
to pervade his art for the next fifteen years. He saw this in part
as a reaction against the art of his generation that he felt had
become ‘limited in its aspirations’. Crozier said he wanted to
‘convey a sense of austerity and isolation, of emotional unease
and perhaps a suggestion of tragedy’ (Katharine Crouan (Ed.),
William Crozier, Lund Humphries, 2007, p.14). Commenting
on these pictures he said ‘I always thought of them as
portraits,even self portraits’ (Op.Cit, p.15) but they are also
without question a universal depiction of man. Crozier, having
spent several months in Paris at the start of his career, had
been particularly influenced by post-war existentialist thought.
He had lived through some of the greatest horrors of the 20th
Century, and during the 1960s with the Cold War at its height,
the question of man’s isolation and the condition of mankind
was at the forefront of his concerns as an artist. 1956 had
brought contemporary American art and in particular Abstract
Expressionism to the attention of the British public through
an exhibition at the Tate, and Crozier had undoubtedly been
influenced by the gestural painting style of this new generation
of artists. In the early 1960s he incorporated this in his landscape
painting with a reduction of colour, relying upon just primary
colours to create landscapes of high emotional drama.
Our thanks to Katharine Crouan whose writings formed the
basis for this catalogue entry.
€1,000 - 1,500
