Education
Thwaites studied history at the universities of Lausanne and Cambridge.
Thwaites studied history at the universities of Lausanne and Cambridge.
In 1946 he was posted from London to the British Consulate in Munich. Thwaites worked as an art critic from 1933 onwards. He also started collecting works by modern masters such as Paul Klee, Kandinsky and Henry Moore.
This came to a premature end in 1939 when he had to abandon his entire collection in his then apartment in Katowice due to the German invasion of Poland.
In 1949 he left the Foreign Service and devoted himself to establishing modern art in West Germany, lecturing, writing for a number of newspapers and giving slideshows. As German correspondent of Art and Artists (London), of Art News and Pictures on Exhibit (New York), among others, he worked to restore German art to the international standing he felt it deserved.
Living in Düsseldorf from 1955 he supported the artists of Gruppe 53 and ZERO. In the seventies he worked as a lecturer at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and did radio broadcasts for Westdeutscher Rundfunk. A critic must be capable of rubbishing his personal friends and praise artists he personally dislikes.
He should, if need be, harm himself.
He must never write for personal advantage. Power and position are corrupting even as money. When critics protect each other and each other"s protégés they create an intellectual corruption that will strangle art
From 1931 he was a member of the British Foreign Service, and worked until 1943 as a British vice-consul in Hamburg, New York, Chicago, Katowice, León (Mexico) and Panama.
