Alistair Grant

Alistair Grant was a great and justly-revered experimental British printmaker. He worked in the printmaking department of the Royal College for 35 years (1955 -90), acting as Head of Department 1970 -90 and as Professor of Printmaking (Emeritus) 1984 -90. He retired to pursue his love of painting. He also co-authored an important book on the life and works of fellow English artist Henry Moore, whom his abstract figurative style resembles. Mr. Grant died suddenly in 1997.

These prints are from the late 1960s and show the strong influence of figurative abstraction and surrealist elements in Grant’s work. The shapes he uses become a visual vocabulary and are ciphers of existing forms – organized on strongly colored backgrounds which allows them to be read as landscapes. This approach to describing a sense of place finds echoes in the St. Ives artists though Grant’s work have their own unique character.