George Peter Lanyon was a British painter of landscapes leaning heavily towards abstraction.
16 Facts About Peter Lanyon
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Peter Lanyon took up gliding as a pastime and used the resulting experience extensively in his paintings.
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Peter Lanyon died in Taunton, Somerset, as the result of injuries received in a gliding accident and is buried in St Uny's Church, Lelant.
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In 2015 Peter Lanyon's Gliding Paintings were shown as a set in the Soaring Flight exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, London.
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Peter Lanyon was born in St Ives, Cornwall, in 1918.
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Peter Lanyon was the only son of W H Lanyon, an amateur photographer and musician.
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Peter Lanyon travelled around Italy with his wife Sheila in the summer of 1950 and became a leading figure in the St Ives group of artists.
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Peter Lanyon had his first solo exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery, London in 1949 and taught at the Bath Academy of Art, Corsham from 1951 to 1957.
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Peter Lanyon held his first exhibition at Gimpel Fils in 1952 and the gallery went onto represent him throughout his life.
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Peter Lanyon ran an art school, St Peter's Loft, at St Ives from 1957 to 1960 with Terry Frost and William Redgrave and in 1959 he was awarded second prize at the second John Moores Exhibition in Liverpool.
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Peter Lanyon met Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell and other artists, critics and collectors.
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Peter Lanyon was well received in New York and the increased demand for his work in the US combined with an expansion of work to the much larger scale of mural painting and in response to a new interest in gliding led to a looser and more open kind of painting.
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Peter Lanyon began training as a glider pilot in 1959, hoping "to get a more complete knowledge of the landscape".
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Peter Lanyon used his gliding experiences as the basis for paintings which gave an aerial perspective to his native Cornish landscape until his death in a gliding accident in 1964.
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Peter Lanyon travelled to Prague and Bratislava in 1964 to lecture for the British Council.
16.
Peter Lanyon died on 31 August 1964 at Taunton, Somerset, after a gliding accident.