Key Information
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 20th century (Creation)
Level of description
Collection
Extent
180 items
Content and Structure
Scope and content
Collection includes: Artworks by Colin Wilson including drawings, paintings, prints and graphic design works; artworks by various artists collected by Colin Wilson including prints by Alasdair Gray, Elspeth Lamb and Alan Cox; associated papers and ephemera including notebooks from Wilson's studies at school and at The Glasgow School of Art, exhibition posters and Wilson's Curriculum Vitae; and material related to Peter Blake including magazine articles, correspondence and photographs.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
Material has been arranged into the following four subfonds and by material and/or date within each subfonds: Artworks; Collected artworks by various artists; Associated papers and ephemera; Material relating to Peter Blake.
General Information
Name of creator
Biographical history
Colin Wilson studied Drawing and Painting at GSA in the 1970s. He designed the poster and programme for the 1978 fashion show, and was also an usher at the show. He was awarded a scholarship for postgraduate study in session 1976-77.
Colin did a post-graduate qualification in wood engraving then taught in the Textile Department at GSA before working in the Graphics Department at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. He worked latterly as an artist in a studio in Ruthven Lane, where he died in a fire on 15th February 2002.
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Jorge Lewinski (1921–2008) was a Polish–British photographer and soldier.
Born in Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), in 1921, Lewinski survived Russian occupation, internment, and forced labour in Siberia. After conscription into the Polish army, he served with Allied forces in South-west Asia. In 1942, he was sent to Britain to join the RAF, and afterwards settled.
In 1966, having developed a name for himself through the portraiture of artists, he became the pre-eminent photographer of artists in Britain. Subjects included Francis Bacon, LS Lowry, David Hockney, Henry Moore, Marcel Duchamp, Peter Blake, Pauline Boty, Gilbert and George, Barbara Hepworth, Barry Kay, William Pye, Peter Lanyon, Marc Vaux, Albert Irvin, Maggi Hambling, Kenneth Martin, Sean Scully, Bridget Riley, Reg Butler, Anthony Gormley, Julian Trevelyan, Sheila Fell, Allen Jones, Richard Wilson, and more.
Lewinski was Senior Lecturer at the London College of Printing from 1968 to 1982, and he was admired as both a teacher and a writer on photography.
He was married to Mayotte Magnus, the photographer, and lived between England and France.
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Ugo Mulas was an Italian photographer noted for his portraits of artists and his street photography.
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The art of Ian Hamilton Finlay is unusual for encompassing a variety of different media - poetry, philosophy, history, gardening and landscape design amongst others. His work assumed concrete form in cards, books, prints, inscribed stone or wood sculptures, room installations and fully realised garden environments.
Ian Hamilton Finlay was born in the Bahamas of Scottish parents in 1925. He was called up in 1944 and served in the Army for three years. Although he attended Glasgow School of Art from 1941-1942, he did not complete his Diploma and considered himself primarily to be a writer — indeed throughout his career referred to himself as a poet rather than an artist.
After the war, he lived in Perthshire, making a precarious living by writing: he published a volume of poems, The Dancers Inherit the Party, and had several scripts broadcast by the BBC. In 1966 he moved with his wife to a property at Stonypath in rural Lanarkshire, with extensive grounds which would eventually come to be known as Little Sparta. Here he began to work on the garden which became central to his life’s work.
Though his work is usually Classical in form, sometimes with surreal overtones, Finlay never claimed any skill as a craftsman employing assistants who were always fully credited and treated as collaborators. Finlay insisted upon precise execution and first-rate technical qualities in any work associated with his name, and to achieve this he chose to work with top calligraphers and carvers, though there was never any doubt that the concept and design were entirely his own.
Despite devoting his life and art to the pacifist cause, Finlay was famously prone to confrontation — with everyone from his local council in Scotland and the various British Arts Councils to the French Government. His running battles with Strathclyde Regional Council over whether he should pay commercial rates on a ruined cow byre in his grounds, converted into what the council claimed was a commercial gallery while in his eyes it was a garden temple, made news in a way that hardly any art exhibition could ever hope to.
A severe sufferer from agoraphobia, Finlay was virtually confined to Little Sparta for more than 20 years, and concentrated much of his creative energy on its garden, which is tightly organised with inscribed stones, monuments and whole buildings, many reflecting, by way of myth and legend, on the subject of war
Despite bouts of serious illness he remained enormously productive in a great variety of media. In 1981 he co-founded, with Jessie McGuffie, the Wild Hawthorn Press, as an outlet for contemporary poetry, but gradually it came to concentrate almost exclusively on his enormous output of poems and texts, photographs and prints.
He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1985, and appointed CBE in 2002.
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Alan Cox graduated from the Central School of Art in 1965 and exhibited widely both in the UK and internationally. His group shows included exhibitions at the Barbican Centre and the Royal Academy, while solo shows included Stones at the Jordan Gallery and the Glasgow Print Gallery in Scotland. He lived and works in London.
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Biographical history
Alasdair Gray was born in Riddrie in Glasgow in 1934. He studied at The Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957. As an artist, he specialised in mural, narrative paintings, still life, figurative subjects and portraits and worked in oil and the occasional watercolour. His murals are shown at the Oran Mor venue and in the Hillhead Subway Station, both in Glasgow.
The main themes in his paintings were the Garden of Eden and triumph of death. He published numerous forms of literature including novels, short stories, plays, poetry, essays, and translations. He wrote about politics and the history of British literature including realism, fantasy, and science fiction. As a prolific author and illustrator, his best-known book titled 'Lanark' (1981) is seen as a landmark in Scottish literature. He won various awards for his typography, illustrations, and written works. Since 1979, he exhibited three times at the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) in Edinburgh and the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts 29 times.
Considered a polymath, he suffered from bad eczema and asthma. Politically, he was Left and supported Scottish independence. In 1961, he was married to Inge Sorensen until 1970. In 1991, he married Morag McAlpine who died in May 2014. In 2015, he had a bad fall and was confined to a wheelchair for a time. Gray passed away in 2019 the age of 85; he left his body to science. He is survived by his son, Andrew, and a granddaughter. His work has been exhibited in Glasgow Museums, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Library of Scotland, and the Hunterian Museum.
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Elspeth Lamb studied at Glasgow School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University and the Tamarind Institute of Lithography, University of New Mexico USA, her main specialism being printmaking. She is an elected RSA Academician, and an elected member of the Society of Scottish Artists and Royal Glasgow Institute, and has taught several workshops in lithography at the Joan Miro Foundation in Mallorca, Spain. For 21 years she taught at the Edinburgh College of Art, latterly as Head of the Department of Printmaking and she has been visiting lecturer at many colleges in the UK including the Glasgow School of Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College Dundee and Middlesex University. She chose to give up all academic teaching commitments in 1999 to pursue her artistic career.
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Biographical history
Painter, printmaker, artist in opto-kinetic construction and teacher, born in Cambridge. Studied at Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, 1962–4, Nottingham College of Art and Design, 1964–7, where his work was influenced by the tuition of Bridget Riley, and at Slade School of Fine Art, 1967–9, under Robyn Denny. Went on to teach at Glasgow School of Art. Did some scientific book illustration. Showed widely in England and abroad. Work held by Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery, Scottish Arts Council and Cambridge University. Lived for some time at Kirkintilloch, Dunbartonshire.
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Calum Mackenzie joined Glasgow Print Studio as Director in 1975 and led the organisation until 1983. Under his ambitious leadership the organisation flourished, moving from a West End flat to large premises on Ingram Street. Prestigious and popular exhibitions included Mark Gertler, Max Ernst, L.S. Lowry and the Scottish Cartoonists exhibition. At Ingram Street, Calum established the Print Studio Press, giving writers such as Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead their first opportunity to have a book published. He also presided over many inventive fundraising events, such as the first ‘Loveliest Night of the Year’, the legendary annual Midsummer’s Ball.
In recent years, Calum began to use the Print Studio again to produce his own digital prints. His work was exhibited regularly at Glasgow Print Studio as well as being shown at the Royal Scottish Academy in 2010 to great acclaim.
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Administrative history
The Glasgow School of Art has its origins in the Glasgow Government School of Design, which was established on 6 January 1845. The Glasgow Government School of Design was one of twenty similar institutions established in the United Kingdom's manufacturing centres between 1837 and 1851. Set up as a consequence of the evidence given to the House of Commons Select Committee on Arts and their connection with Manufactures of 1835-1836, the Government Schools hoped to improve the quality of the country's product design through a system of education that provided training in design for industry. Somerset House was the first of such schools to be established, opening in 1837, and others followed throughout the provinces.
In 1853 the Glasgow Government School of Design changed its name to the Glasgow School of Art. Following the receipt of some funding from the Haldane Academy Trust, (a trust set up by James Haldane, a Glasgow engraver, in 1833), The Glasgow School of Art was required to incorporate the name of the trust into its title. Consequently, it became the Glasgow School of Art and Haldane Academy, although by 1891 the "Haldane Academy" was dropped from the title. Glasgow School of Art was incorporated in 1892. In 1901 the Glasgow School of Art was designated a Central Institution for Higher Art Education in Glasgow and the West of Scotland.
Initially the School was located at 12 Ingram Street, Glasgow, but in 1869, it moved to the Corporation Buildings on Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. In 1897 work started on a new building to house the School of Art on Renfrew Street, Glasgow. The building was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, former pupil of The Glasgow School of Art. The first half of the building was completed in 1899 and the second in 1909.
The Government Schools ran courses in elementary drawing, shading from the flat, shading from casts, chiaroscuro painting, colouring, figure drawing from the flat, figure drawing from the round, painting the figure, geometrical drawing, perspective, modelling and design. All these courses were introduced from the start at the Glasgow School apart from that of design. The course in design was the "summit of the system" where students came up with original designs for actual manufactures or decorative purposes and it was not until 1849, when Charles Heath Wilson became headmaster, that classes in design began to be taught. Also in this year Bruce Bell was engaged to teach mechanical and architectural drawing.
After 1853 the above pattern of courses was extended to 26 stages which formed the national curriculum for art schools. This system was known as the South Kensington system. An Art Masters could be awarded by gaining certificates in the available subjects. There was no restriction on entry and students could take as long as they wished to accumulate their passes before being awarded their Art Masters.
In 1901 the Glasgow School of Art was given the power to award its own diplomas. In the same year Art 91D classes for day school teachers commenced which were later known as the Art 55 classes. From 1901 to 1979 the School of Art awarded its own diplomas and thereafter it awarded degrees of the Council for National Academic Awards. In the 1970s the School of Fine Art and the School of Design were established. With the demise of the Council for National Academic Awards, from 1993 Glasgow University awarded the School's degrees in fine art and design.
In 1885 the Glasgow School of Art taught architecture and building construction conforming to the South Kensington system. Following on from the designation of the School as a Central Institution and the empowerment of the School to award its own diplomas, the School and the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College worked together to produce a curriculum for a new course leading to a joint diploma.
In 1903 the joint Glasgow School of Architecture was established within the Glasgow School of Art in conjunction with the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College. For the new diploma design classes were to be taught at the School of Art and the construction classes at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College. The first diplomas in architecture were awarded in 1910.
In 1924 the Glasgow School of Art became a university teaching institution when the University of Glasgow set up a BSc in Architecture which was to be taught at the School of Architecture. In 1964 the Royal College of Science and Technology (formerly the Royal Technical College, formerly the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College) merged with the Scottish College of Commerce to form the new University of Strathclyde. Following the merger the Glasgow School of Architecture came to an end, the last students transferring to Strathclyde degrees and graduating in 1968.
In 1970 the Mackintosh School of Architecture was established. It is housed within the Glasgow School of Art and forms that school's Department of Architecture. Its degrees are accredited by the University of Glasgow and its Head is the University's Professor of Architecture.
The Glasgow Government School of Design was originally managed, as were the other Government Schools, by the Board of Trade and a Committee of Management representing local subscribers. Then, in 1852, the Government Schools of Design were taken over by the Department of Practical Art. This Department was renamed the Department of Science and Art in 1853 and was located in South Kensington, London. The Committee of Management was replaced in 1892 by the Board of Governors. In 1898, control of the School was transferred again, this time to the Scotch Education Department (renamed the Scottish Education Department in 1918).
The School became academically independent in 1901 when it was free to develop its own curriculum and its own diplomas, subject to the approval of the Scottish Education Department. The chief executive of the School was the Headmaster, renamed Director in 1901, and a Secretary and Treasurer was responsible for all aspects of the administration of the School. As the School grew, other administrative posts were added.
Archival history
Custodial history
Donated by Aileen Elliott, Dec 2021.
Physical Description and Conditions of Use
Conditions governing access
Glasgow School of Art Archives and Collections are open for research by appointment. For further details, please refer to our Access Policy @ https://gsaarchives.net/policies
Conditions governing reproduction
Application for permission to reproduce should be submitted to The Archives and Collections at The Glasgow School of Art.
Reproduction subject to usual conditions: educational use and condition of material.
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Language of material
- English
Script of material
Language and script notes
Physical Description
Finding aids
Related Material
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related materials
Notes area
Alternative identifier(s)
Keywords/Tags
Place access points
People and Organisations
- Wilson, Colin (Subject)
- Blake, Sir Peter Thomas (Subject)
Genre access points
Status
Level of detail
Processing information
Catalogued by Erin Doak, student work placement, Jul 2024.
Language(s)
- English