John Bainbridge Copnall was an English artist best known for his abstract expressionist painting of richly coloured stylised realism, often on a grand scale.
12 Facts About John Copnall
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John Copnall was a teacher of painting for twenty years at the Central School of Art and Design in London.
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John Copnall's father was the eminent sculptor Edward Bainbridge Copnall whilst his mother Muriel was an enthusiastic amateur artist.
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John Copnall's paternal grandfather, Edward White Copnall, was an early photographer and artist.
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John Copnall showed early promise in drawing and at the age of eighteen he began studying at the Architectural Association in London.
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John Copnall had several solo exhibitions in Spain and Catalonia as well as shows in Germany where he was popular and a lesser one in England in Newcastle.
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In 1968, John Copnall returned to England and the following year held a solo exhibition at the Bear Lane Gallery in Oxford.
8.
John Copnall stated that 'Painting is colour and colour is painting.
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John Copnall had a series of solo exhibitions held throughout the 1970s but thereafter became an increasingly peripheral figure in the context of mainstream English art, as abstract art began to lose influence with new 'pop' styles in vogue.
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Nevertheless, he was an influential figure for the next generation of British artists by virtue of a twenty-year period from 1973 to 1993 when John Copnall worked as a teacher at the Canterbury School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design.
11.
John Copnall married, secondly, in 1976 to Caroline Brown with whom he had a son and a daughter.
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John Copnall died on 9 June 2007 following a short illness.