Cyril Mann
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[edit] CYRIL MANN
British painter and sculptor (1911-1980)
[edit] Overview
Cyril Mann was a British painter who added a new dimension to figurative art by exploring the dynamic effects of sunlight in a
different way from his predecessors', J.M.W. Turner and the Impressionists. Many of Mann's early works were inspired by bomb-scarred
buildings in the City of London after the war. The artist also completed a number of sculptures, including a large commission to carve a
family crest for a manor house.
[edit] Biography
Cyril Mann was born in London, England on May 28 1911. He spent most of his childhood in Nottingham where, at 14, he was the youngest boy at the time to be awarded a scholarship to study at the Nottingham School of Art.
Two years later he left for Canada, hoping to become a missionary. After giving up religion and while working at various jobs in British
Columbia - including mining, logging and printing - Mann was inspired by the beauty of the landscape to start painting again. In Vancouver he met Arthur Lismer, a portrait painter originally from Sheffield who was a member of the Canadian Group of Seven. Lismer advised the young man to return to England and continue his art studies there. He returned to London in 1933. During a spell on the unemployment pay (the dole) in the Depression years, he continued drawing and painting water colours around the Little Venice canal in Maida Vale.
He met the Rev Oliver Fielding Clark, who admired his work and helped to set up a trust fund to enable Mann to study at the Royal Academy Schools. He gained admission in 1935 on the strength of his water colours. After three years at the RA Schools, Mann continued his art education in Paris, still supported by his art patron, Erica Marx.
He returned to England with his first wife, Mary Jervis Read at the outbreak of war. Their daughter, Sylvia, was born in 1940. Throughout the war, Mann served as a Gunner in the Royal Artillery but was never appointed an official war artist.
In an art career that spanned nearly half a century, the effects of light and shadow, remained a life long fascination. In his earliest work done in Paris and London before and just after the war, the artist paints facing the sun. These small-scale works of urban scenes tend to be mono-chromatic and done from preliminary sketches.
For three years, from the early to mid-1950s, Mann painted in artificial light, focusing on the three-dimensional shape of shadows, cast by household objects on surfaces. This development, known as the "solid-shadow period", was important to Mann's artistic development, as he uses strong, intense colouring with a formalised line for the first time.
In his final phase, from the 1960s onwards – when, coincidentally, he married his second wife, the Dutch-Indonesian Renske van Slooten, who was 29 years his junior – the Mann painted the dynamic effects of light and shadow. He uses as his inspiration nudes of his young wife, as well as sunlit interiors, flowers, self portraits and anything else at hand, such as an oil can and stapler and toys from his second daughter, Amanda, born in 1968. There is a sense of release, as these now often large oils are painted direct and at great speed.
Mann died on January 7, 1980, aged 68, after suffering years of mental instability and heart disease, brought on by his perceived lack of recognition, which he blamed on the rising fashion for abstraction at the expense of figurative art in the 20th century. His last self portrait, entitled "Ecce Homo" (or "Behold The Mann"), shows the artist defiantly posing nude, between two earlier self-portraits.
[edit] Exhibitions and commissions
1948 Group Show, "Artists of Fame and Promise", Wildenstein Gallery, Bond Street 1950s Solo show, Park Row Gallery, Nottingham 1950s 2-man show with Anne Estelle Rice, Brook Street Gallery 1950s Mixed Shows at the Hanover Gallery 1950s East End Academy, Whitechapel Gallery 1950s Several shows at the Archer Gallery 1958 Completes large sculpture commission including a crest for a manor house. 1963 Solo show St Martin's Gallery, nr St Martin's Lane 1964 Solo show Rawinski Gallery, Soho 1965 Paintings selected for opening show at Alwin Gallery, Brook Street 1966 Joins and exhibits with Contemporary Portrait Society 1967 Two-man show at Alwin Gallery 1968 Third two-man show at Alwin Gallery 1970s Shows with Contemporary Portrait Society at various galleries, including Upper Grosvenor Gallery 1970's Private exhibitions backed by Dr and Mrs M Leibson, patrons of the artist for many years 1978 Solo show at the Ogle Gallery, Eastbourne 1990 Retrospective: Museum of St John & Jerusalem, Islington, London 1992 Piano Nobile Gallery, "Cyril Mann – a Tribute to the artist and his work"; 1994 Piano Nobile Gallery, "Cyril Mann – Works on Paper"
[edit] Publications about Cyril Man
The Sun is God – the Life and Work of Cyril Mann, John Russell Taylor Pub: Lund Humphreys, 2000.
Face to Face, British Portraits in the 20th Century", Philip Vann Pub Sansom & Co, 2004
"Genius of the ordinary", David Hamilton Eddy Times Higher Educational Supplement, October 16, 1992
"Cyril Mann", Arts Review, October 1992
"Cyril Mann" Rachel Barnes, Galleries Magazine, 1993
"Twentieth Century Top 20" Antiques Magazine, Issue 801, October 1999
"Tribute to a Great Mann" Waltham Forest Guardian, September 30, 1999
"Recognition of a genius at last?" Antique Trades Gazette, October 2, 1999
"In brief: The Sun is God" Keith Miller Times Literary Supplement, November 5, 1999
[edit] Where works can be seen
[edit] Public Collections
Guildhall Museum & Art Gallery, London William Morris Museum, Walthamstow, London
