Background

Andrew Lanyon was born in 1947 in St. Ives, Cornwall, United Kingdom. He is a son of Peter Lanyon, a British painter, and Sheila St. John Browne. Lanyon has three brothers named Matthew, Martin, Jo, and two sisters, Jane and Anna.

Education

Andrew Lanyon was raised in the West of Cornwall. A son of a painter, he developed an interest in art early in his life.

Lanyon studied at the London School of Film Technique (currently London Film School) from 1966 to 1968.

Career

Andrew Lanyon began his artistic path as a freelance photographer. He has also tried himself as an organizer of exhibitions managing the show Casual Eye dedicated to snapshots.

In 1976, he collaborated with the Photographers’ Gallery managing a touring exhibition for it. Called The Rooks of Trelawne, it is held at the St. Ives Museum by the present day. Another show, The Vanishing Cabinet, followed. Both exhibitions were accompanied by books.

By the end of the decade, Lanyon had enough of his own paintings and collages that he started to present at his solo exhibitions. His first book, Deadpan, that would become a trilogy, saw publication in 1987.

In the middle of the 90s, the artist changed the focus of his activity and concentrated on movies. The first picture he produced under the direction of Bill Scott, a Cornish language movie Splatt dhe Wertha (Plot for Sale), was based on one of his books. It was well-received by critics and broadcast on Westcountry Television. The debut movie was followed by other productions, such as Laughing Gas, Badly Parked Car, and Fairy Questions Answered.

Another major exhibition project of Andrew Lanyon, Von Ribbentrop in St Ives – Art and War in the Last Resort was held in 2011 at Kestle Barton and Peer and Kettles Yard. It correlated the fascist invasion of Cornwall with the supremacy of abstraction under realism in modern art through a variety of media.

In addition to a rich collection of paintings, collages, and movies, Lanyon has issued many books, including the volumes on his father, a painter Peter Lanyon, Alfred Wallis, and their other notable fellows.

Nowadays, Andrew Lanyon lives and works in his native Cornwall.

Achievements

• 

  Andrew Lanyon is an accomplished artist who has managed to realize himself as a painter, sculptor, moviemaker, and author.
  
  In 1997, he received a Golden Torc award at the Celtic Film Festival for his debut movie Splatt dhe Wertha (Plot for Sale).
  
  Lanyon’s artworks are acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum, the New York Museum of Modern Art, the British Council, the Contemporary Art Society, and held in many private collections.
  
  In 2011, The Telescope by Andrew Lanyon was purchased for $1,264 at Tennants Auctioneers Auction House.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Build Up of Static in Art

    (One of the books from Deadpan Trilogy.)

    1992
  • The Rooks of Trelawne 1976
  • Another A. B. C. 1989
  • Unjustified Text 1995
  • The Vanishing Cabinet: A photographic illusion 1980
  • Circular Walks Around Rowley Hall 2006
  • Peter Lanyon: Works and Words 1995

• painting

  • Alfred Wallis with the wreck of the Alba

  • The shadow of Von Ribbentop

  • Picnic at Loe Bar

  • Abstract Sculpture of a Boat washed ashore at St. Ives

  • They’d arranged to meet under an identical tree in an identical wood

  • Within the Mill

  • Writer's Block

  • The Return

  • The Fountain

  • The Waterfall

  • The Scyther Returns

  • The Leaf and the Boat

  • The First Notes fell like snow flakes

  • Morning Sun

  • Harvest Moon

  • Evolution

  • Autumn Leaf

  • Autumn

  • A Painter waits until a sound dictates a feeling

  • Autobiography of a Writer

Views

Quotations: "Most of my paintings tell no story."

Connections

Father:

Peter Lanyon

Mother:

Sheila St. John Browne

Grandfather:

Herbert Lanyon

Brother:

Matthew Lanyon

Brother:

Martin Lanyon

Brother:

Jo Lanyon

Sister:

Jane Lanyon

Sister:

Anna Lanyon