Biography

Gerry Hunt was born in London in 1927, went to grammar school and was evacuated on the outbreak of war. Leaving school he went to technical college to study engineering, not very enthusiastically. At that time he discovered that he could draw and went to evening life classes. After National Service and demobilisation he worked for five years in his father’s business. This was not a success, partly as he had become leftwing politically. He then thought that Social Realism was what he aspired to do, so he gravitated to where he felt that he could be appropriately trained by the realists of the who were on the staff. He ended up at the doing Post Graduate studies,

He left the Slade in 1957 when news of the filtered through to the British Art world, which tempted him to attempt pure painting without direct reference to the objective world. He was excited by this way of making art and remembers sitting in St, Georges Gallery watching paintings by Francis Bacon being brought into the gallery, still wet. This, funnily enough, converted him to modernism.

His own development then consisted in following various Modern Styles until this period of stylistic experiments finally ended with Conceptual Art, which consisted in working in any media other than painting or sculpture. At this time he was teaching at Camberwell and later at the Byam Shaw. At this point he and many of his students were a bit stuck as to which way to go and as his character is inclined to finding out how best to approach different kinds of work, he did two things. He first of all devised a unique way of teaching non-figurative art, and secondly wrote a piece of conceptual art called ‘Some Principles and Practice of Twelve Modern Art Styles’, which was published as an artists book, and exhibited by in 1980. This was in the form of twelve recipe cards for the main styles of Modern Art. Many in the Art World at the time thought that he was having a joke. In fact he learned something important for himself; principally that conceptualism was the last style of Modernism. He felt that the last hundred years had been a series of new and radically different ways to paint pictures or to make sculpture. Perhaps it had now become impossible to pursue these objectives any more? It then seemed to him that the way forward for visual art was to make work in unlikely media: film, words, happenings, installations or whatever. He then realised that, what had now become available for artists was in fact, to do without a current style altogether. For himself, he thought that it would now be possible to use anything from the whole lexicon of established Modern Art Styles, allowing it to be more appropriate to the sensibility of the artist concerned. This possibly explained his own need to work in a variety of styles over the years. He then felt encouraged to return to painting and drawing as a means of expression. He was now released from any obligation to work as a conceptualist. He also realised that his own sensibility fell almost anywhere between the extremes of classic-romantic and expressive-objective. He has always inclined towards drawing, either the world around him, or subdividing a rectangle in a meaningful way, hence his book on drawing, written quite recently, although he has been doing it and teaching it for many years. He has always been interested in the mechanics of art, which has been a great help in his teaching. His current work benefits from this as well, particularly as to how he limits his choices. This is what he has come to think is the key to enhancing the artist’s ability to make good choices. Surely this is what every artist needs?

Cambewell School of Art

Slade

 Euston Road School

Abstract Expressionists

Coracle Press