Bruce McLean

Bruce McLean is a Scottish sculptor, filmmaker, and painter. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1961 to 1963 and at Saint Martin's School of Art from 1963 to 1966, where he and others rebelled against what appeared to be the formalist academicism of his teachers, including Anthony Caro and Phillip King. In 1965, he abandoned conventional studio production in favour of impermanent sculptures using materials such as water, along with performances of a generally satirical nature directed against the art world. When, in 1972, he was offered an exhibition at the Tate Gallery, he opted for a 'retrospective' he titled King for a Day, which lasted only one day. From the mid-1970s, while continuing to mount occasional performances, McLean has turned increasingly to painting, sculpture, and film work. In 1985, McLean won the John Moores Painting Prize. Since retiring from his professorship of painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, he has taken on a large studio in the west of London, where he has been making increasingly large paintings and sculptural film works.

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Prints I published

12 February - 9 March 2019

In 1969 Bernard Jacobson began his career as an art dealer, selling and publishing prints by important contemporary artists from a small fourth-floor gallery in London’s Mayfair. For a gallery founded on printmaking and which continues to stage major print shows by artists including Matisse and Motherwell, what better way could there be to celebrate this half century than a two-part exhibition devoted to printmaking?

Bruce McLean: 5 Decades of Sculpture

26 April - 29 June 2019

Bernard Jacobson Gallery is delighted to announce a special season of exhibitions, publications, film, and performance celebrating half a century of the creative output of Bruce McLean, one of the most important figures in British contemporary art. The season will include a two-part retrospective at Bernard Jacobson Gallery, the publication of a new book with essay by Mel Gooding and commentary by McLean, and the premiere of a film by McLean and long-time 'Nice Style' collaborator, Gary Chitty, titled The Decorative Potential of Blazing Factories.

Bruce McLean: A Hot Sunset and Shade Paintings

2 December 2016 - 28 January 2017

Bernard Jacobson Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new work by acclaimed British action sculptor, painter, and ceramicist, Bruce McLean. The exhibition will feature works produced over the past year, including six Shade paintings, a series of vivid works which explore light and shadows, as well as a six-meter long minimalist Sunset painting, and a group of new monoprints on wood.

Bruce McLean: The Shapes of Sculpture

10 October - 10 November 2012

Bernard Jacobson Gallery is delighted to present a show of new work by Scottish artist Bruce McLean. McLean has been investigating the condition of sculpture since the late 1960s and creatively interrogating, in an astonishing diversity of media, the nature of its validity, its diverse possibilities of meaning, its propositions and pretensions, its presentations, positionings and re-positionings, its private and public settings, indoor and outdoor, and its critical contexts.

Bruce McLean: New Work

9 October - 7 November 2009

Bruce McLean is back with his first exhibition of new paintings in more than 20 years. Collectively entitled The Black Garden Paintings, these works are abstracted paintings of his gardens in Barnes and in Menorca, where he spends part of the year, and of his friend's garden also in Barnes.