Overview

"The remarkable thing about Bill is the way in which he has stayed true to his own values, spirit and intellectual position, over a fifty, sixty year period"

Sir Nicholas Serota, Beyond Time, 2010. 

Offer Waterman exclusively represents the Estate of William Turnbull.

 

Visit the William Turnbull website  www.turnbullstudiokimlim.com

Follow the artist's estate on Instagram  @williamturnbull_artist

Find William Turnbull in the Tate Collection Tate Gallery

Works
Exhibitions
Biography

1922  Born Dundee, Scotland, 11 January

 

1939-41  Worked in the illustration department of a national periodical company, Dundee

 

1946-48  Studied at Slade School of Fine Art, London

 

1948-50  Lived and worked in Paris

 

1950  Took up permanent residence in London

First marriage to the musician Katharina Wolpe

Kenneth King, Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull, Hanover Gallery, London; Aspects of British Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

 

1952  Visiting Artist, taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London until 1961

Solo exhibition at Hanover Gallery; New Aspects of British Sculpture, British Pavilion, XXVI Biennale, Venice; Young Sculptors, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

 

1956  Contemporary Sculpture, Hanover Gallery, London; This is Tomorrow, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Yngre Brittiska Skulptorer, Gothenburg Museum touring exhibition

 

1957  First visit to USA

Solo exhibition, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Ten British Sculptors Exhibition, Bienal São Paulo touring exhibition

 

1958  Contemporary British Sculpture, Arts Council of Great Britain, London touring exhibition; New Trends in British Art, New York-Rome Art Foundation touring exhibition

 

1959  European Art Today: 35 Painters and Sculptors, Minneapolis Institute of Arts touring exhibition

 

1960  Married sculptor and printmaker, Kim Lim

First solo exhibition at Molton Street Gallery, London, further solo show in 1961

The Mysterious Sign, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

 

1961  2nd International Exhibition of Sculpture, Musée Rodin, Paris; Neue Malerei in England, Stadtisches Museum, Leverkusen, Germany; Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pennsylvania

 

1962  Son Alex born

First travels in Japan, Cambodia and Malaysia

Hirshhorn Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; British Art Today, San Francisco Museum of Art, touring exhibition

 

1963  Son Johnny born

Solo exhibition, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York

 

1964  Taught sculpture at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, until 1972

Guggenheim International, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, Tate Gallery, London

 

1965  Solo exhibition, Benington College, Vermont; Solo exhibition, Galerie Müller, Stuttgart

British Sculpture in the Sixties, Tate Gallery, London; Signale, Kunsthalle, Basel; Drawings from the Betty Parsons Collection, New York; Sculpture from the Albert A. List Family Collection, New School Art Center, New York

 

1966  Solo exhibition,Pavilion Gallery, Balboa, California

New Shapes and Forms of Colour, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

 

1967  First solo exhibition at Waddington Galleries, London, further solo shows in 1969, 1970, 1976, 1978, 1981, 1982, 1985, 1991, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010

Solo exhibition, IX Bienal, São Paulo, touring to South America

Guggenheim International, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

 

1968  Solo exhibition, Hayward Gallery, London

Documenta 4, Kassel, Germany; Sculpture in the City, Arts Council Gallery, London, touring exhibition

 

1972  Commissioned by the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation to create a public sculpture for the City Sculpture Project

 

1973  Major retrospective exhibition at the Tate Gallery, London, organised by Richard Morphet

 

1974  Solo exhibition organised by Scottish Arts Council, Edinburgh; British Painting, Hayward Gallery, London

 

1976  The Human Clay, Hayward Gallery, London

 

1977  British Painting:1952-77, Royal Academy of Arts, London

 

1978  The Mechanised Image, Arts Council of Great Britain, touring exhibition; John Moores Liverpool Exhibition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2nd prize)

 

1979  Tate 79 (inaugural exhibition for the new extension), Tate Gallery, London

 

1981  British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century: Part 2: Symbol and Imagination 1951-1980, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London

 

1984  Solo exhibition at the National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore, with Kim Lim

 

1986  Forty Years of Modern Art 1945-1985, Tate Gallery, London; British Sculpture 1950-1965, New Art Centre, London

 

1987  British Art in the Twentieth Century: The Modern Movement, Royal Academy of Arts, London, touring to Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

 

1989  Scottish Art Since 1900, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh touring exhibition

 

1990  The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty, Institute of Contemporary

Arts, London, touring exhibition

 

1992  New Realities, Art in Western Europe 1945-68, Tate Gallery, Liverpool

 

1993  The Sixties Art Scene in London, Barbican Art Gallery, London

 

1995  Solo exhibition, Serpentine Gallery, London, selected by David Sylvester

 

1997  From Blast to Pop: Aspects of Modern British Art, 1915-1965, David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago

 

2000  Welded Sculpture of the Twentieth Century, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York

 

2002  Transition: The London Art Scene in the Fifties, Barbican Art Gallery, London

 

2004  Large Horse, 1990, installed at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield

Art and the 60s: This Was Tomorrow, Tate Britain, London, touring exhibition

 

2005  William Turnbull: Retrospective 1946-2003, at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, opened in May

 

2006  Survey exhibition of sculpture in the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain, London

 

2011  Beyond Time: William Turnbull, a film by Alex Turnbull and Pete Stern, narrated by Jude Law, premieres at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

Modern British Sculpture, Royal Academy of Arts, London

 

2012  Westminster Council City of Sculpture Festival, Park Lane, London

November, dies in London aged 90

 

2013  Solo exhibition at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire

 

2015  Offer Waterman, London, Selected Works from the Artist’s Estate

 

2017 Offer Waterman, London, William Turnbull: New Worlds, Words, Signs

 

2019  Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, USA, long-term loan of Large Horse, 1990 plus a selection of works on paper on display from September 2019

Video
Publications
News