William Crozier Seize the Flow'r

About

Returning from a visit to New York in September 1979, William Crozier had a rush of creative energy. Newly aware of his European identity, he produced a cycle of vibrant still life paintings and watercolours. It was a celebration of Chardin and Picasso and a rejection of the large-scale abstract American painting he had encountered. The moment marked a transition from Crozier’s earlier angst-ridden work to his mature style of colourful, tightly woven designs. 

These still life paintings are brought together here for the first time in forty years. They have not been shown together since exhibitions at Swiss Cottage Library in 1980 and Galleria del Cavallino, Venice, in 1984. 

In his still life paintings, Crozier used a vase of flowers to express higher truths. The subject of flowers helped to illuminate the time-worn idea of vanitas and Crozier was fond of quoting Robert Burns, who wrote, 'But pleasures are like poppies spread, you seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed.' 

Flowers were more than a pretty ornament to Crozier: they were a potent symbol of death and a constant reminder of mortality. His still life paintings betray this elevated perspective and achieve a ‘grand manner’ – historically reserved for multi-figure narrative painting – using forceful contrasts of colour, mirror images, and the dramatic juxtaposition of light and shade.

Piano Nobile’s exhibition William Crozier: Seize the Flow’r  will overlap with a sister display at The Lightbox, Woking. That exhibition, William Crozier: Nature into Abstraction, will present landscape paintings made between 1958 and 1961. 

William Crozier is one of the premier Irish painters of the post-war period and these exhibitions follow a period of growing interest in his work. Following his death in 2011, many leading public museums have acquired his work including the Tate Collection, the Imperial War Museum and the National Gallery of Ireland. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2017.

Notes to Editors

Piano Nobile, 96 / 129 Portland Road, London W11 4LW, www.piano-nobile.com

Monday–Friday 10am–6pm; Saturday 11am–4pm. Nearest tube: Holland Park.

Piano Nobile specialises in twentieth-century British art. The gallery also represents a number of well- established artists’ estates represented in private and public collections in the UK and internationally. Piano Nobile has established a reputation for authoritative exhibitions and publications under the gallery’s imprint, Piano Nobile Publications. Recent titles include From Omega to Charleston: The Art of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant (2018); Leon Kossoff: A London Life (2019), long-listed for the William M.B. Berger Prize; and Sickert: The Theatre of Life (2021). 

William Crozier was born in Glasgow in 1930. He studied at Glasgow School of Art between 1949 and 1953, moving to London after he graduated and quickly gaining a reputation with exhibitions at the ICA, Arthur Tooth & Sons and the Drian Galleries. Over a long career, he was sustained by a handful of transformational experiences. These included spending 1963 in southern Spain with the poet Anthony Cronin and a visit to the concentration camps at Belsen and Ravensbruck in 1969 which spawned an iconic series of skeleton paintings. Crozier served as Head of Fine Art at Winchester School of Art between 1968 and 1987. He received several public accolades in his lifetime, being awarded first prize for ‘young international painter’ at the Premio Lissone competition in Milan in 1958 and receiving the Oireachtas Gold medal for painting in Dublin in 1994. Since his death in 2011 his work has been acquired by the Imperial War Museum, the Tate Collection and the National Gallery of Ireland. A major retrospective of Crozier’s work was held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2017.

William Crozier: Nature into Abstraction 1958-1961 will be held at The Lightbox, Woking, between 2 April and 19 June 2022. In association with Piano Nobile and the Estate of William Crozier, the exhibition presents landscape paintings from an important transitional period in the artist’s career. An accompanying exhibition catalogue will feature an essay by Thomas Marks, former editor of Apollo magazine, and the publication as a whole will provide an insightful guide to Crozier’s work during this important period.

The Lightbox, Chobham Rd, Woking, Surrey GU21 4AA. A public gallery and museum, awarded in 2008 as the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year. It is home to the Ingram Collection, the Joan Hurst Collection and the Heritage Collection, and its recent exhibitions have included a retrospective of work by Bridget Riley and old master drawings loaned from the collection of Chatsworth House.