William Tillyer
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Biography
William Tillyer is a celebrated British painter and watercolourist whose work has been shown frequently in London and New York since the 1970s. Tillyer was born in Middlesbrough and studied painting at Middlesbrough College of Art. He then went on to study at London's Slade School of Fine Art. He began to make radically experimental work, which raised questions about the relationship of art to the world, and of man to nature. The 1970s saw Tillyer return to printmaking with renewed vigour, using a variety of techniques - from etching to five-tone screenprinting - to create lattices that Pat Gilmour described as 'a cool and unpeopled world...in which to reflect the surrounding flux of nature'. Tillyer has been invited to work internationally in locations including Cadiz, Spain; Tobago, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago; Count Kerry, Ireland for the Cill Rialaig Project; and Melbourne, Australia. Tillyer has served as a visiting professor at Brown University in the United States, the Bath Academy of Art, and the Chelsea School of Art. Tillyer has exhibited internationally, and his work can be found in the collections of major institutions including the Brooklyn Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth; the Arts Council Collection; the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art; and Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
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Works
Exhibitions
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Object / Subject: The Art of Still Life
7 July - 26 August 2022Bernard Jacobson Gallery is pleased to present a selection of still lifes by Georges Braque, William Tillyer, Bruce McLean, Matthew Smith, and Tom Wesselmann, among others. -
Bruce McLean, William Tillyer, Marc Vaux: New Works
London Gallery Weekend 4 June - 2 July 2021Bernard Jacobson Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition of recent works by Bruce McLean, William Tillyer, and Marc Vaux. -
William Tillyer: The Mulgrave Tensile Wire Works and The Mulgrave Wire Scrolls
16 September - 30 October 2021In The Mulgrave Tensile Wire Works, William Tillyer has produced probably the most radical paintings of his career. Stainless steel wires strung across a metal frame and held in tension by turnbuckles support geometrically shaped areas of metal mesh, woven through with paint reflecting the colours of the North Yorkshire landscape, where the artist has lived for most of his life. -
William Tillyer: Watercolours
8 October - 13 November 2020Ranging from abstracted mediations on the organic flow of materials to large bodies of work made in response to William Tillyer’s extensive travels (from Sweden to Australia; a European Grand Tour to the American West; the artist’s native Yorkshire to the coast of County Kerry), this show encompasses the wide-ranging interests that characterise the artist’s approach in all media. -
Prints I wish I had published
11 January - 9 February 2019In 1969 Bernard Jacobson opened his first London gallery – a fourth-floor walk-up on Mount Street, Mayfair, dealing in prints by international stars, including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg, as well as publishing prints by leading British artists including Malcolm Morley and Robyn Denny. Printmaking fit the radical, pop sensibility of the time, and Jacobson was part of that heady explosion of interest in the medium. As the gallery approaches its half century in 2019, it is fitting that this landmark year opens with an ambitious two-part exhibition exploring Jacobson's personal and abiding love of prints and some of the remarkable works published by the gallery during an eventful 50 years in the business. -
Prints I published
12 February - 9 March 2019In 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? -
Some of the artists I have worked for
10 September - 5 October 2019To end the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the gallery, we are delighted to introduce a selection of works by the artists that helped shaping its success. -
William Tillyer: The Golden Striker and Esk Paintings
26 September - 24 November 2018Bernard Jacobson Gallery is delighted to announce William Tillyer: The Golden Striker and Esk Paintings, a special exhibition of new paintings staged in celebration of William Tillyer's 80th birthday this September. -
William Tillyer and Alice Oswald: Nobody
26 April - 23 June 2018Bernard Jacobson Gallery is delighted to announce William Tillyer and Alice Oswald: Nobody, a collaboration between the acclaimed British artist William Tillyer and Alice Oswald, who is widely regarded as the finest living British poet and is the current artist-in-residence at BBC Radio 4. -
William Tillyer: À Rebours
15 February - 24 March 2018Bernard Jacobson Gallery is delighted to announce William Tillyer: À Rebours, an exhibition of the new folio of 52 prints by William Tillyer inspired by Joris-Karl Huysmans' seminal nineteenth-century novel. The folio will also be accompanied by the publication this February of a new translation of À Rebours by acclaimed author and translator, Theo Cuffe; the publication will be illustrated throughout by Tillyer. -
William Tillyer: Radical Vision
12 January - 10 February 2018William Tillyer: Radical Vision is the first of a series of five exhibitions at Bernard Jacobson Gallery presented during 2018 to honour the work of William Tillyer as he turns 80. The gallery's working relationship with Tillyer spans the rich evolution of his practice across almost five decades, representing a creative pairing unique in contemporary art and one which is also celebrated throughout 2018. -
William Tillyer: The Wildenstein Hermitage and Other Paintings
10 March - 13 April 2017Bernard Jacobson Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of works by William Tillyer. The professional relationship between Bernard Jacobson and the artist will serve as backdrop to the selection of pieces, representing a condensed exploration of the themes, graphic elements, and inspirations behind one of the greatest British artists, in occasion of the writing of the artist's biography by Jacobson. -
William Tillyer: The Palmer Paintings
1 May - 20 June 2015Bernard Jacobson Gallery is very pleased to announce that our second exhibition in our new space on Duke Street St. James's will be a series of paintings by one of Britain's leading painters William Tillyer. The Palmer paintings continue Tillyer's long engagement with the English landscape and in particular his lifelong obsession with clouds. -
William Tillyer: The Watering Place
11 October - 20 December 2013To mark the artist's 75th birthday, Bernard Jacobson Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new works by British artist William Tillyer. The exhibition will consist of works from two new series: The Watering Place and Palmer. The exhibition will coincide with the artist's retrospective exhibition at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. -
William Tillyer: The Balcony Watercolours
10 February - 2 April 2011The acknowledged master of watercolour William Tillyer presents a new series of works made in the latter part of last year while on a tour of southern Europe. Views of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic are seen from hotel balconies in a style which is at times explosive and at others reflective. -
William Tillyer Season: The Prints
5 - 27 February 2010Celebrating William Tillyer and Bernard Jacobson's long-running working partnership, spring 2010's four-part exhibition series will begin with a look at Tillyer's extensive printed output. -
William Tillyer Season: The Paintings
3 March - 3 April 2010As part two of the four-part Season exhibition series, March's The Paintings retrospective will take a look at the evolution of William Tillyer's singular approach to picture making across five decades. -
William Tillyer Season: The Watercolours
9 April - 15 May 2010Part three of the four-part Season exhibition series traces the evolution of William Tillyer's watercolour practice across four decades, revealing the vitality and relevance he has brought to the traditional medium. -
William Tillyer Season: New Paintings, Clouds
19 May - 19 June 2010The concluding part of the Season exhibition series will offer a first glimpse of William Tillyer's latest body of work. -
William Tillyer: The Cadiz Caprices
12 September - 11 October 2008The 25 works which make up this new series were executed in William Tillyer's North Yorkshire studio and yet recall the impressions and experiences the artist gained during his three-month residency in the Castillo de Santa Catalina, Cadiz, in 2006, at the invitation of the municipal government. -
William Tillyer: The Revisionist Wire Works
1 December 2006 - 6 January 2007In December Bernard Jacobson Gallery will be showing a group of six new large paintings by William Tillyer. Under the group title The Revisionist Wire Works these paintings hark back to Tillyer's earlier experimentation with the grid structure and the mesh. In addition to this exciting group of new paintings we will show a small survey of Tillyer's works from the artist's 40-year career. -
William Tillyer: Still Life
29 September - 29 October 2022Bernard Jacobson Gallery presents a selection of still lifes by the British artist William Tillyer. This exhibition examines the development of the still life throughout the course of Tillyer's career and unfolds through a variety of media, including watercolours, prints, oil paint and acrylic, and the artist's signature wire mesh, which he incorporated as early as the 1970s. -
Mixed Show
10 - 30 November 2022Bernard Jacobson Gallery presents a mixed show of gallery artists. Artists include Ivor Abrahams, Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, Robyn Denny, Sam Francis, John Hoyland, Henri Matisse, Bruce McLean, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Richard Smith, William Tillyer, and Marc Vaux. -
William Tillyer: The Mulgrave Tensile Wire Works
28 September - 11 November 2023Bernard Jacobson Gallery presents The Mulgrave Tensile Wire Works by British artist William Tillyer, alongside his Scalby Suite and Study for a Constructed Painting series. This exhibition presents Tillyer’s reinvention of the traditional still life genre. The first series, the Mulgrave Tensile Wire Works (2021-22), are painted on wire mesh deconstructing the conventional relationship between medium and support. The second series, the Scalby Suite etchings (2022), demonstrate Tillyer’s skill as a printmaker while including his distinctive grid motif. The final series on display are the watercolours, Study for a Constructed Painting (2023), which reveal Tillyer as the colourist and simultaneously exhibits the unifying structure of the grid.
Art Fairs
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The Armory Show
8 - 11 March 2012 -
Art Basel | Basel
14 - 17 June 2012 -
EXPO CHICAGO
20 - 23 September 2012 -
Frieze Masters
17 - 20 October 2013 -
IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair
4 - 8 November 2015 -
London Original Print Fair
5 - 8 May 2016View Artsy Fair Booth -
London Original Print Fair
3 - 6 May 2018View Artsy Fair Booth
Publications
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William Tillyer - A Retrospective
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Some of the artists I have worked for
Published on occasion of the homonymous exhibition held at Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, 10 September - 5 October 2019 -
William Tillyer: Watercolours
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William Tillyer: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
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Against Nature
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William Tillyer: Against the Grain
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Nobody
With text by Alice Oswald and 23 watercolours by William Tillyer, Nobody is a unique crossover work - both a book and an exhibition of luminous watercolours. Created over three... -
William Tillyer: Against Nature
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William Tillyer: The Cadiz Caprices
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Hardware Variations on a Theme of Encounter
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William Tillyer: The Victorian Canvases
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William Tillyer, New Paintings: Clouds
Fully illustrated catalogue with extensive introductory text placing Tillyer's new work in the context of his ongoing concerns and evolving approach. -
William Tillyer: The Mulgrave Tensile Wire Works