Correspondence, press cuttings and poems by or about Merlyn Evans

Merlyn Evans was a painter of surrealist and abstract works, a printmaker and a sculptor. This collection includes a small amount of correspondence concerning Evans' life and teaching and extracts from periodicals and newspapers relating to his exhibitions and a collection of his poems.

This is a summary catalogue of the archive. For the full version please visit https://archive.tate.org.uk/advanced.aspx?this=CalmView.Catalog and search using the reference 'TGA 7012'.

Merlyn Oliver Evans was born in Llandaff, near Cardiff, 13 March 1910 and died in London, 31 October 1973. A Welsh painter and printmaker he grew up in Glasgow and enrolled as a student at the Glasgow School of Art 1927-1931. He was awarded a travelling scholarship and visited Berlin, Copenhagen and Paris before winning a place at the Royal College of Art. He studied carving there from 1932-1934, marrying fellow student Phyllis Sullivan with whom he had two children. The marriage was dissolved during the Second World War. From 1934-1936 he taught art at Wilson's Grammar School, Camberwell, frequently visiting Paris where he met Mondrian, Kandinsky, Giacometti, Ozenfant and others. He exhibited with the London Group, at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London and in 1937 at the Salon de Mai. In 1938 he moved to South Africa, taking up the post of lecturer in art at Natal Technical College. He had his first one-man exhibition at the City Art Gallery, Durban in 1939. In 1942 he enlisted in the Signals Company, South African Army. He moved through North Africa and Italy, eventually being transferred to War records in Rome. He painted and drew throughout the war and met and drew De Chirico while in Rome. He was discharged from the Army in 1946 and settled in London. From 1947 Merlyn Evans exhibited work regularly at many London galleries, particularly St Georges Gallery, the Leicester Galleries and at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. In 1953-1954 he exhibited at the II Bienal, Sao Paulo with the British Section and in 1956 was given his first retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. From 1963 he took a studio in St Ives most summers, befriending many of the St Ives colony, including Barbara Hepworth. In 1964, commissioned by the Arts Council, he devised a metal screen for Tower Hamlets Comprehensive School and in 1966 he was awarded a gold medal at the Royal National Eisteddfod, Aberavon. The 1960s saw him exhibiting work in the USA, in Philadelphia in 1964 and in New York in 1965. Regular teaching at the Royal College of Art from 1965-1973 led him to taking part in an exchange artists programme with the School of Art Institute of Chicago in 1967. Whilst there he visited New York and met Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt. In 1968 Marlborough Fine Arts, London, hosted a large one-man exhibition 'Events and Abstractions' and in 1972 the V&A held a retrospective exhibition of his graphic work. He died in October 1973 in London. Since then there have been several large scale exhibitions of his work hosted by the Welsh Arts Council (1974), the Tate Gallery (1985) and the Mayor and Redfern Galleries (1988).