John Cecil Stephenson - Pioneer of Modernism

1st edition exhibition catalogue, published by Conor Mullen/DLI Museum and Durham Art Gallery, 2012

Format: Softcover, 210x265mm

Pages: 64

Condition: Very Good

This exhibition at the DLI Museum and Durham Art Gallery celebrates the achievements of one of the most important artists to come from County Durham. John Cecil Stephenson was born in Bishop Auckland in 1889 he studied at Darlington Technical College then Leeds College of Art, Royal College of Art in London and the Slade. In recent years there has been a growing awareness of John Cecil Stephenson's contribution to British 20th Century art. However throughout his life Stephenson worked in obscurity. There are many reasons why an artist's career or body of work can remain overlooked during his lifetime. In Stephenson's case these were probably more to do with personality and background rather than due to any prevailing fashion or lack of talent. Stephenson's own modesty and his preoccupation with teaching could not have helped either. Acutely conscious of his Northern working class roots, he retained throughout his life and to the continued detriment of his career, a certain detachment from cosmopolitan artistic circles. By temperament if not necessarily by choice he remained something of an outsider. But as Herbert Read said "he was one of the earliest artists in this country to develop a completely abstract style" Thus reaffirming the importance of Stephenson's place amongst a remarkable group of pioneering British modernists. Despite living with and working within the artistic milieu of Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, Stephenson a naturally shy man, did not achieve the same level of fame as some of his contemporaries. This exhibition focuses on the work of the 1930s when Stephenson was at the forefront of the British artistic move towards abstraction as well as showcasing Stephenson's contribution to the vanguard of British modern art.