Albert Irvin, the London-based British artist best known for his exuberant paintings, watercolours, screenprints and gouaches, has died. He was 92.
Irvin’s gallery, Gimpel Fils, announced his death on Twitter, stating: ‘It is with great sadness we announce that Albert Irvin died this morning, Thursday 26 March’.
Irvin’s life as an artist began in the 1940s when he attended the Northampton School of Art; he had to cut short his studies after joining up as a navigator in the Royal Air Force during the second world war. He returned to art education after the war, enrolling at Goldsmiths in 1946. He later went on to teach at the college from 1962 to the early 1980s.
The 1950s saw Irvin move from figurative work to embrace abstraction, while in 1959 he took a job as an art teacher at Wandsworth Prison. In 1965 he became a member of The London Group. During the 1970s he experimented with the medium of his art, moving from oils to acrylics and briefly embracing lithography.
In 1980 Irvin started screenprinting and began a partnership with the printmakers Advanced Graphics that continued until his death. In 1983 he won the Gulbenkian Award for screenprinting.
Irvin joined Gimpel Fils gallery in 1982 and he was elected a Royal Academician in 1998. The curator Paul Moorhouse, author of the book Albert Irvin: Life to Painting, said of him: ‘even to those familiar with his work, seeing a new painting by Irvin can be an extraordinary experience akin to discovering a young, energetic artist in the first flush of ambition.’
Irvin continued working as an artist into his 90s and presented an exhibition with Alan Davie at Gimpel Fils in May 2013. In the same year he received an OBE.
