Gwyther Irwin

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

David Gwyther Irwin (7 May 1931–18 October 2008) was a British abstract artist born in Basingstoke, Hampshire, who lived much of his life in north Cornwall. He studied in Dorset, then at Goldsmiths College and the Central School of Art in London (1951–1954). Irwin first gained attention in 1957 with an exhibition at Gallery One and again in 1959 at Gimpel Fils. In 1964 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, alongside Joe Tilson, Bernard Meadows and Roger Hilton. He married Elizabeth Gowlett in 1960; they had two sons and a daughter.

Irwin is best known for collages made from newsprint and fragments of advertisements that he and his wife collected from the streets, then carefully assembled into delicate, subtly shaded works. Some later pieces used string, wood shavings, chalk and paint. The Times praised his work in 1959 as "miracles of patient assembly" with subtle tonal shifts from dark to light.

In the 1960s he taught at art schools in Hornsey, Corsham and Chelsea, and from 1969 to 1984 he was head of fine art at Brighton Polytechnic.