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William Crozier: Savagery Beneath the Surface

Past exhibition
3 October - 15 December 2017
  • Summary
  • Works
  • Publications
  • Installation Views
  • Press
Summary
William Crozier, Savagery Beneath the Surface

William Crozier: Savagery Beneath the Surface was an exhibition showcasing the paintings of William Crozier, staged in collaboration with a major retrospective of Crozier’s entire career held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, William Crozier: The Edge of the Landscape.

 

Profoundly affected by post-war existential philosophy, Crozier consciously allied himself and his work with contemporary European art throughout the 1950s and 1960s, towards painters such as Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung and Nicolas de Staël. His visits to Paris in 1947, 1950, and 1953 were formative experiences: “Anyone who was not young in 1949 and who did not sit in the Café de Flore or the Deux Magots, where Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were as gods, simply cannot appreciate the sheer excitement that enveloped the young of Europe emotionally, physically and intellectually.”

 

The landscape became the source of visceral paintings: instinctive, animated brush strokes convey the primitive energy Crozier unearthed in the natural world. For Crozier, ravaged landscapes symbolised the torment and fear of the post-war condition at the heart of existentialism. In the early 1960s the human figure entered Crozier’s imagery, though often interred in blasted landscape or, as in the work of the 1970s, flayed, skeletal, and screaming. In the introduction to Crozier’s 1961 solo exhibition, G. M. Butcher wrote, “if there is one thing that Crozier wishes to get across in all his painting, it is a mood of fear, anxiety, unease. This is his personal reaction to the world as it is - where savagery is only just beneath the surface.”

 

From the 1980s, Crozier’s paintings assumed a vivid radiance. Inspired by the landscape of West Cork, a melancholic disquiet is as present in these vibrant mature works as in his early images of traumatised humanity. His youthful skill as a colourist reaches its zenith in paintings that capture the essence and appearance of the West Cork landscape during a period of great change in Ireland.

 

William Crozier: Savagery Beneath the Surface showed the continuum that runs through all of Crozier’s work, presenting his expressionistic prowess that distills primitivism with the unease of modernity.

 

A major publication produced by IMMA accompanied this exhibition with new essays by Riann Coulter, Katharine Crouan, Mark Hudson, Enrique Juncosa, Seán Kissane, and Dr Sarah Victoria Turner.

 

A gallery talk was given by Dr Sarah Victoria Turner, Deputy Director of Research at the Paul Mellon Centre and contributor to William Crozier: The Edge of the Landscape.

 

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Works
  • William Crozier, Dried Lake, Essex, 1959
    William Crozier, Dried Lake, Essex, 1959
  • William Crozier, Death's Way II, 1969
    William Crozier, Death's Way II, 1969
  • William Crozier, Red Landscape, Crystal Palace, 1960
    William Crozier, Red Landscape, Crystal Palace, 1960
  • William Crozier, Figure in Landscape, 1962
    William Crozier, Figure in Landscape, 1962
  • William Crozier, Road to Chartres II, 1967 c.
    William Crozier, Road to Chartres II, 1967 c.
  • William Crozier, Untitled (Landscape), 1958
    William Crozier, Untitled (Landscape), 1958
  • William Crozier, Figure, 1961
    William Crozier, Figure, 1961
  • William Crozier, Gramercy Park, 1979-80
    William Crozier, Gramercy Park, 1979-80
  • William Crozier, Landscape, England, 1989-90
    William Crozier, Landscape, England, 1989-90
  • William Crozier, Kilcoe Field, 2007
    William Crozier, Kilcoe Field, 2007
Publications
  • William Crozier

    William Crozier

    The Edge of the Landscape Coulter, Riann; Crouan, Katharine; Glennie, Sarah; Hudson, Mark; Juncosa, Enrique; Kissane, Sean; Turner, Sarah, 2017
    Softback 144 pages
    Publisher: Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin
    ISBN: 978-1-901192-48-3
    Dimensions: 32 x 28 cm
    Read more
Installation Views
  • Crozier Installs 1
  • Crozier Installs 3
  • Crozier Installs 29
  • Crozier Installs 18
  • Crozier Installs 31
  • Crozier Installs 26
Press
  • The Sunday Times reviews William Crozier exhibition

    The Sunday Times reviews William Crozier exhibition

    Cristin Leach August 6, 2017
    William Crozier exhibition, review, The Sunday Times art review, Irish Times art review, Irish artist exhibition
    Read more

Related artist

  • William Crozier

    William Crozier

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