Work by Pablo Picasso is included in a new display in Pallant House Gallery will showcase a new bequest from the collection of architect Peter Collymore.
An Architect’s Eye: The Peter Collymore Gift includes works by Picasso, Paul Nash, Eileen Agar, William Scott, Prunella Clough and more. This new bequest is said to compliment the gallery’s existing “collection of collections”, which tells the story of passionate collectors of art who donated their collections to the gallery.
This latest gift comes from Collymore, an architect who designed the library building for the Britten-Pears Foundation (BPF) on the site of The Red House in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.
Collymore studied architecture at Cambridge and then at the Architectural Association, London. He was in private practice after working in the USA and taught at the Canterbury School of Architecture. He has contributed to a number of architectural journals as well as being author of several books on architecture and the architect Ralph Erskine.
Paul Nash, Winter, Hampden, 1921, wood engraving on paper, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (Gift from a Private Collection – Promised as a Future Bequest 2016)
His collection included drawings, paintings, prints and sculptures, many of which are abstract and suggest that he was drawn to artists with an interest in the relationship of space and form.
It continues a tradition of architects who also collected works of art and subsequently presented their collections to the gallery. These include Colin St John Wilson, architect of the British Library and, in association with Long and Kentish Architects, the contemporary wing at Pallant House Gallery.
Wilson’s collection includes many important examples of British Pop Art and figurative art by artists such as Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, David Bomberg, Lucian Freud and William Coldsteam. David Medd, one of the leading architects of schools in post war Britain (The David Leslie Medd Bequest, 2009), also left his collection of Modern British prints, including iconic works Edward Bawden, Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland.
Eileen Agar, Figures in a Forest, n.d., gouache, ink, pastel, biro and wax crayon on paper, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (Gift from a Private Collection – Promised as a Future Bequest 2016) © Estate of Eileen Agar.
“A large part of what makes the Gallery’s ‘collection of collections’ fascinating is how each private collection represents the personal choices made by the collectors and their individual tastes and interests,” says a publicity release. “The Peter Collymore Gift presents a collection informed by an architect’s eye and lends its own character to the permanent collection, continuing the narrative of collectors and collecting at Pallant House Gallery and a particularly personal approach to British art history.”
Main Picture: Pablo Picasso, Vingt Poems de Gongora, 1948, aquatint on paper, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (Gift from a Private Collection – Promised as a Future Bequest 2016) © DACS
*An Architect’s Eye: The Peter Collymore Gift will be on display in the De’Longhi Print Room at Pallant House Gallery from 18 October 2017 – 11 February 2018. Entry to the De’Longhi Print Room is free.
