Alan Reynolds

Born 1926 – Died 2014

Alan Reynolds was born in Newmarket. After serving in the Second World War, Reynolds joined Woolwich Polytechnic School of Art in 1948, before winning a scholarship in 1952 to the Royal College of Art. During these years he established himself as a successful landscape painter, earning a reputation for his Neo-Romantic, dreamlike depictions of Suffolk fields and Kentish hop gardens. In the late 1950s, however, Reynolds’ work underwent a radical transformation, turning away from nature and embracing pure ‘concrete’ abstraction inspired by artists such as Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian. By the late 1960s, Reynolds had abandoned painting altogether, pursuing ideas of structure, geometry and rhythm through his constructed cardboard reliefs, woodcuts and tonal modular drawings – a practice that would dominate the remaining fifty years of his career.