Digital Editions
Newsletters
Subscribe
Digital Editions
Newsletters
Art market
Museums & heritage
Exhibitions
Books
Podcasts
Columns
Technology
Adventures with Van Gogh
Art market
Museums & heritage
Exhibitions
Books
Podcasts
Columns
Technology
Adventures with Van Gogh
Review
news

In brief: Welsh landscape

Alexander Adams
1 March 2016
Share

Wales is better known for music and literature than for the visual arts. To address this imbalance, Gomer has published a dictionary of artists working in Wales since 1945. Artists who were born, lived or worked in Wales are given short entries describing their career and output, with some colour illustrations. Welsh artists have had common themes but no national style. Much Welsh art derives from landscape (coasts, valleys and mountains) and industry (mining and sheep farming). Kyffin Williams’s impasto landscapes of gloomy mountains are the best-known works by a recent Welsh artist. Some successful international artists are classed as British and their associations with Wales are overlooked, as in the cases of David Nash, Richard Deacon and Ralph Steadman. From the 1960s to the 1980s the nationalist movement inspired political and Welsh-language performance art. Craft artists are included in the book, recognising the strength of crafts in Wales. This dictionary includes a useful introductory survey of trends, groups and institutions, and is an important, comprehensive reference work for scholars studying post-war British art.

• Alexander Adams is a British critic and poet. His latest long poem, On Dead Mountain, is published by Golconda

Post-War to Post-Modern: a Dictionary of Artists in Wales

Peter W. Jones and Isabel Hitchman

Gomer Press, 829pp, £45 (hb)

ReviewBooks
Share
Subscribe to The Art Newspaper’s digital newsletter for your daily digest of essential news, views and analysis from the international art world delivered directly to your inbox.
Newsletter sign-up
Information
About
Contact
Cookie policy
Data protection
Privacy policy
Frequently Asked Questions
Subscription T&Cs
Terms and conditions
Advertise
Sister Papers
Sponsorship policy
Follow us
Instagram
Bluesky
LinkedIn
Facebook
TikTok
YouTube
© The Art Newspaper

Related content

Reviewnews
7 July 2016

Putting history into art history: on 18th-century British Art

Recent scholarship examines the social context

David Bindman
Booksarchive
30 September 2004

The new Dictionary of National Biography is much more comprehensive than the Victorian original it replaces

More artists, more women, more sex

Martin Bailey