23 Facts About Prunella Clough

Prunella Clough is known mostly for her paintings, though she made prints and created assemblages of collected objects.

Prunella Clough was awarded the Jerwood Prize for painting, and received a retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain.

Apart from wartime service, during which she worked as a cartographer for the Office of War Information, Clough painted full-time until her death in 1999, supplementing her income with teaching posts at Chelsea and Wimbledon School of Art.

Prunella Clough retained strong links with the area throughout her career; the coastal landscape, a local quarry, and fishermen at nearby Lowestoft and Yarmouth harbours provided significant early subjects.

Prunella Clough had her first solo show at the Leger Gallery in London in 1947.

In 1951, Prunella Clough participated in the exhibition 60 Paintings for '51, organised by the Arts Council to coincide with the 1951 Festival of Britain, for which they commissioned 60 artists to produce paintings of 4 by 5 feet or more.

Prunella Clough's submission was entitled Lowestoft Harbour, a painting of two fishermen weighing a catch of fish.

Prunella Clough visited a number of factories and industrial sites with the sculptor Ghisha Koenig, and became close friends with the painter David Carr, who shared her interest in the industrial landscape as a subject.

The novelist Margaret Drabble has noted that while many of her early paintings included the human figure, it gradually disappeared from her works, and Prunella Clough's canvases became more abstract during the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1960, Prunella Clough had her first retrospective at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, under the directorship of the curator Bryan Robertson.

The early 1980s saw Prunella Clough embark on a series of paintings that focussed on an abstracted 'gate' motif, and she became fascinated by the shadows cast by passing people on subway walls, creating a number of works on this theme.

Prunella Clough created lithographs early in her career, and from the early 1960s often worked at the Curwen Studio in Plaistow.

Prunella Clough's work enjoyed increasing recognition from the 1970s onwards, with exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery in 1976, followed by shows at the Warwick Arts Trust, the Camden Arts Centre and Kettle's Yard.

From 1988 Prunella Clough was represented by Annely Juda Fine Art.

Prunella Clough is recognized as an accomplished artist, yet did not become as famous as some of her peers.

Prunella Clough was very generous in regards to money and her art.

Prunella Clough would let people reproduce her work, but did not want money for it.

Prunella Clough cites the weather in England as the probable cause for this trend.

Prunella Clough often made changes to her paintings after she had begun working on them.

Prunella Clough's actual painting techniques furthered this by adding more texture.

Prunella Clough's paintings gave unique views of everyday features of the urban landscape.

Prunella Clough sometimes took photographs of her subject matter, but more important to her was the memory of the experience of seeing something.

Prunella Clough died on 26 December 1999, aged 80, following a battle with cancer.