(1922 - 2012)
William Turnbull was born in Dundee. He left school at 15, attended evening art classes and got a job as an illustrator for the publishing house DC Thompson, who were known particularly for the children’s comic book classics such as Beano. He joined the RAF in 1941 during the Second World War, where the experience of flying was to influence how he saw the world and made art. After the War he enrolled at the Slade School of Art in London, initially for painting but then moved to the sculpture department, meeting Eduardo Paolozzi there. Unusually for the mid-twentieth century, he lived a well-travelled life, spending time in Europe, the US and East Asia. He met and remained connected with the many artists and sculptors, who he met on his travels, from Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti in Paris to Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Helen Frankenthaler in the US. In 1952 he participated in the acclaimed Aspects of British Sculpture exhibition at the Venice Biennale and at the influential This is Tomorrow exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Art in London. Turnbull continued also to explore painting, with one eye on developments in this area in the United States. It is considered he made ‘some of the boldest and extraordinary paintings in Britain in the 1960s and 70s, many of which were included in a major retrospective on his work at the Tate in 1973. His work has been, and continues to be, widely exhibited in the UK and overseas.
