William Turnbull
The gallery regularly handles, acquires and advises on works by William Turnbull. For more information or the availability of work, please contact the gallery.
William Turnbull (1922 - 2012)
William Turnbull was born in Dundee in 1922. He begain his artistic career painting film posters and then as a commercial illustrator, whilst also taking classes in landscape painting at Dundee University. After World War II, during which he served in the RAF, Turnbull briefly studied at the Slade School of Fine Art between 1946 and 1948 before moving to Paris where he met Eduardo Paolozzi. This led to his association with the Independent Group at the ICA in the 1950s which included Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton and the critic David Slyvester amongst others, and his inclusion in the 1952 Young Sculptors exhibition at the ICA.
Turnbull's early sculpture included works in traditional materials of bronze, stone and wood often evoking totemic columns or ancient rock formations with a delicate, often playfully unstable, balance between powerful stillness and movement. By the 1960s, however, Turnbull was focusing primarily upon jagged diagonal metallic vertiginous sculptures with a tendency towards seriality, evoking the practice of American Minimalist sculpture but utilising the colours of American Colour Field Painting, the final manifestation of Abstract Expressionism. The final period of his career from the 1970s until his death in 2012 saw a return primarily to abstract, stylised bronze figurines and busts, focusing on the individual patterns of surface and colour in each intimately sized work.
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Masterpiece
Online Viewing Room 22 - 28 Jun 2020Highlights from our online display included work by Ben and Winifred Nicholson, William Turnbull, Leon Kossoff, Frank Auerbach, William Crozier, David Bomberg, Lucian Freud and Barbara Hepworth . Also on...Read more -
British Art Fair 2019
Stand 17 3 - 6 Oct 2019 Art FairPiano Nobile is pleased to be exhibiting at the British Art Fair 2019. Following the fair's great success in 2018, it will be held at the Saatchi Gallery for a...Read more -
Masterpiece 2016
Royal Hospital Gardens, Chelsea 28 Jun - 6 Jul 2016 Art FairPiano Nobile returns to Masterpiece for 2016 with Modern British, International and Contemporary art for sale.Read more -
Aspects of Abstraction
1952-2007 17 May - 23 Jun 2016 Piano NobilePiano Nobile presents a selection of Post-War abstract art for sale, Modern British art for sale, in Aspects of Post-War Abstraction exhibition.Read more -
Masterpiece 2015
Stand A25 24 Jun - 1 Jul 2015 Art FairPiano Nobile is exhibiting at Masterpiece 2015.Read more -
ART14
Stand D2 28 Feb - 2 Mar 2014 Art FairPIANO NOBILE exhibited at Art14, the second edition of London's global art fair. With galleries from Lagos to Berlin, and from Beijing to Dubai, Art14 London built on the success...Read more
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InSight No. 34
William Turnbull | 1-1965 September 2, 2020The Scottish artist William Turnbull went between tachiste Paris and colour field New York, and devised a versatile succession of paintings and sculptures that range...Read more -
Jackie Wullschlager reviews Aspects of Abstraction
The Financial Times May 17, 2016Jackie Wullschlager at the Financial Times reviews Piano Nobile's exhibition Aspects of Abstraction 1952-2007Read more