Description:Terry Atkinson (born 1939)
Private Riga-Mortis Face, 7th Royal Sussex Battalion, 36th Brigade, 12th Division, VIth Corps in front of St Saveur, Arras, April 1917
Conte pastel on paper, 1976
670mm x 965mm
Purchased with a grant from Resource/V&A Purchase Grant Fund
Drawing of the upper torso of a decomposing soldier lying on his back in a trench.
Over the past 40 years Terry Atkinson has played a significant role in the direction of international contemporary art through his own practice and teaching. Terry Atkinson was born in the coal mining village of thurnscoe in South Yorkshire. He lived there until 1960, when he moved to London to attend the Slade School in October of that year. In 1968 he co-founded the collaborative art group and teaching forum, Art and Language, with David Bainbridgem Michael Baldwin and Harold Hurrell. This was centred on Coventry School of art where Atkinson had started to teach in October 1966. Art and Language expanded the definition of art, basing their art and writing on a continual examination of the concept and role of art and criticism. Art and language challenged the idea that you could not question visual language used by artists because it was something centred in the artist's soul, therefore private and could not be understood by the public. Terry Atkinson lives and works in Leamington Spa.