Craigie Aitchison R.A., MBE, Hon. R.S.A. (1926-2009)

Crucifixion and Dog

signed, dated 2005 and numbered
screenprint

Contemporary
15.5 x 12.75 cm
$800.00

Catalogue Note

Craigie Aitchison is known and admired for his use of intense, pure colour to describe shape and form in extremely spare compositions. His distinctive subject matter is traditional, featuring religious themes, landscapes,portraits and still lifes, all rendered in a vibrant, luminous palette.

Aitchison was elected Royal Academician in 1988 (ARA 1978) and was awarded a CBE in 1999 for his contribution to British Art.

Craigie Aitchison was born in Edinburgh in 1926. He took a law degree in Edinburgh and continued his studies at the Middle Temple before abandoning the law and taking up art at the Slade School of Fine Art, London
(1952-1954). In 1955 he received a British Council Italian Government scholarship enabling him to travel around Italy. The clear light and natural 'Biblical' landscapes he saw and experienced during this visit had a
profound influence on his work. Aitchison's scenes have a timeless, poetic and mysterious atmosphere reminiscent of 15th-century miniatures and powerfully evoke the early Italian Renaissance.

On his return from Italy his work met with instant acclaim: his first solo exhibition was held in 1959 at the Beaux Arts Gallery, London, with two further shows there in the early 1960s. Subsequent solo exhibitions were held throughout the UK including Marlborough Fine Art, London (1968), Compass Gallery, Glasgow (1970), Basil Jacobs Gallery, London (1971), theKnoedler Gallery, London (1977) and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (1979). A major retrospective of his work (1953-81) was held at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 1981, with further retrospectives at Harewood House, Leeds (1994), the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (1996) and at the Royal Academy (2003).

Recent solo exhibitions include Craigie Aitchison: Paintings at Timothy Taylor Gallery, London (2008); Craigie Aitchison at Waddington Galleries, London (2006); Craigie Aitchison: The Prints 1969 - 2008 at Abbott Hall in Kendall, Cumbria (2008); and The Art of Craigie Aitchison at the Paul Smith Space in Tokyo (2008). In 2009, Aitchison received an honorary Doctor of
Arts degree from the University of Bath.