Born in Dundee in 1922, William Turnbull was fascinated by art from a young age, initially learning to draw by copying illustrations from magazines. Forced to leave school at 15 in order to support his family financially, he worked as an illustrator, painting film posters, and honed his skills in evening classes at Dundee University. Following his service in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, Turnbull enrolled in the painting department at the Slade School of Art. However, he became disillusioned with what he perceived as the nostalgic, narrow approach there, and soon transferred to the sculpture department, where he met Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson, who shared his enthusiasm for Modern European art. Turnbull visited Paris in 1947 and moved there the following year. In Paris, he met artists he admired, including Constantin Brancusi and Fernand Léger. The artist Jean Hélion – married to Peggy Guggenheim’s daughter, Pegeen – took Turnbull under his wing and invited him to parties attended by the Surrealists. The critic David Sylvester, who also lived in Paris, organised a joint show of sculpture by Turnbull and Paolozzi at the Hanover Gallery in London in 1950. Short of funds, Turnbull returned to London later that year and became involved with the recently formed Institute of Contemporary Arts. He was one of several young artists, including Richard Hamilton and the photographer Nigel Henderson, who formed the Independent Group, which is often considered a point of departure for Pop Art. Turnbull’s sculpture was defined by his interest in, and re-interpretation of, the powerful, simplified forms of ancient and non-western art. Turnbull’s international reputation was established with his inclusion in the exhibition, New Aspects of British Sculpture, held in formed relationships with American artists and collectors, including Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. Alongside his sculpture, Turnbull always painted and he had separate studios for the two practices. If he had a problem or impasse with a sculpture, he would return to painting, almost paradoxically working out the problem on a flat service, or vice versa. In the 1950s he favoured bronze, and in the early 1960s he made a number of works comprising bronze and carved wood. He wanted the materials to “speak for themselves”, an idea that originated in Japanese art, which Turnbull discovered during his travels to East Asia in the early 1960s. Balance, equilibrium and gravity remained the defining features of his oeuvre. In the mid-1960s, that same approach was brought to other pre-manufactured materials, including steel, Perspex and fibreglass, and these remained his materials of choice through the 1970s. In the 1980s, Turnbull returned to bronze, producing works which, more than ever, connected with ancient, pre-classical sculpture. An exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1995, put Turnbull firmly back on the map (it was his first major show in a public space since his Tate Gallery retrospective in 1973). Turnbull’s sculptures are housed in prestigious collections around the world, including the Tate Gallery, London, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Turnbull died in London in 2012.
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