The Drawings of Peter Lanyon

Peter Lanyon stood at the forefront of landscape painting in Europe during the late 1950s and early 1960s. A prominent St. Ives artist, he was associated with Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo: his work also has affinities with Abstract Expressionism. Lanyon's career started just as the study of drawing was being liberated from nineteenth-century academic constrictions. His many drawings range from records of trips to the Netherlands and Italy to portrait sketches and abstract studies. Lanyon also used drawings extensively in the development of some of his most important paintings. In this substantial and original study, Margaret Garlake explores Lanyon's theory and practice of drawing: the contribution of drawings to the evocation of place in paintings; his use of models and the metamorphosis of the human body into landscape images, as well as his use of three-dimensional constructions as equivalents to drawing.