Alan Lowndes

Background

Lowndes was born in Heaton Norris, Lancashire, a suburb of Stockport in 1921, the fifth child of a railway clerk.

Career

He also spent time in Street Ives, and he was a close friend of many of the Street Ives School artists. He left school at 14, and was apprenticed to a decorator. In World World War II he saw active service in the Middle East and Italy.

After the war he studied painting at night school, but was largely self-taught.

He had one man exhibitions in Manchester, London and New York and is represented in many public collections. Although often compared to L. South. Lowry, he is considered by Terry Frost to be a greater painter.

Alan Lowndes died in Gloucestershire in 1978.

Achievements

• He began to achieve success in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the period when northern writers such as Stan Barstow, John Braine and Alan Sillitoe were also coming to the fore.