We recognize the painters from this region for their contributions to early abstract art, landscape painting, and material advancements in the history of British art. Similar to how French artists pushed the boundaries of inventiveness, British painters did the same. British artists followed the emergence of every significant trend across the Atlantic, greatly affected by the early modern art taking place in America. While keeping that in mind, let’s take a look at the top 10 UK artists to live as of now.
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon is one of the most well-known British artists and is known for his daring, grotesque, intensely emotive, and unfiltered images. Bacon usually positions his figures in a lone geometric space as he veers between figuration and abstraction. His iconic triptych work Three Studies for Figure at the Base of the Crucifix served as the catalyst for his breakthrough. It established Bacon as a distinctively grim recorder of the state of humanity since it was painted shortly after the Second World War.
David Hockney
David Hockney, one of the most well-known and influential British painters of the 20th century, played a significant role in the 1960s pop art movement. Hockney, who works in a variety of creative mediums such as printing, photography, and stage design, is most known for his portraits and portrayals of the sweltering LA summers beside the pool. Through the use of perspective lines, Hockney suggests that he is there in his paintings of friends, lovers, and family members. His photographs are now included among the most famous pieces of art history.
Lucian Freud
The psychological depth of Lucian Freud’s work is most known for often examining the bond between the artist and his model. His workshop, a cavern full of unbelievable tales, is regarded as one of the most enigmatic hubs of artistic creation in the annals of art. His art nearly always has a characteristically lofty perspective and exposes the body as it is in his portrait and figure paintings. Freud exposed the nude human body while researching and experimenting with skin tones, often contrasting it with diverse animals. Numerous other painters modeled for him. Francis Bacon, with whom Freud founded a group that became known as The School of London, was one of the most well-known names among his models.
Richard Hamilton
Richard Hamilton, who is most renowned for his paintings and collages, is really credited with creating the first Pop Art picture. His renowned collage piece Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Alluring?, from his 1955 show Man, Machine, and Motion? According to many critics and art historians, the pieces created for the 1956 show This is Tomorrow are the first examples of pop art. Hamilton utilized advertising from widely read newspapers and magazines to create his renowned collage pieces, contributing to the definition of the renowned 1960s movement in the process. Hamilton emphasized the significance of pop art as being “popular, ephemeral, replaceable, low-cost, mass-produced, youthful, humorous, seductive, gimmicky, flashy, and Big Business.”
Bridget Riley
The British abstract painter Bridget Riley rose to fame when the Op Art movement took off in the 1960s. She first used a stark contrast of black and white lines to give the static picture the appearance of movement. Riley’s paintings were included in the 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye together with works by Victor Vasarely, Frank Stella, and other well-known artists. Beginning with the art movement of the 1970s, Riley added color to her creations and kept the trickery going by experimenting with shifting form patterns and altering optical combinations. Riley is well known for her black and white paintings, which have been compared as having the same effects as being seasick or jumping. This makes Riley one of the most well-known British artists of the 20th century.
Frank Auerbach
Frank Auerbach is renowned for creating some of the most imaginative paintings of people and urban environments. ShaperoModern noted that he was born in Berlin and has lived in the UK since 1947 as a naturalized British citizen. His signature thick, almost monstrous impasto, which has been compared to capturing the soul of a person or a location, aids the artist in producing flowing works. Although his aesthetic looks to be an expressionist painting, it really has a realist foundation. Auerbach has contributed to the development of a new aesthetic language of painting. He has been influenced by some of the great of figurative painting, including Titian, Rembrandt, and Peter Paul Rubens.
Howard Hodgkin
Howard Hodgkin, one of the most well-known British painters, brought fresh ideas to the field of painting. Hodgkin characterized a painting as an object by moving away from the conventional canvas surface and focusing on the durability of the wooden support, such as drawing boards and door frames. The rectangular picture frame was further highlighted, furthering his innovative notion, by the employment of sweeping expressive brushstrokes and a brilliant palette of clashing hues. His early work is distinguished by compositions that embrace flatness and collage. Hodgkin expanded into the manufacturing of prints during his later years and added more intricate flowing patterning to his paintings.
L.S. Lowry
For his portrayals of numerous situations in the industrial areas of North West England, L.S. Lowry is best known. The breadth of his output was only realized after the artist passed away. He is well renowned for his metropolitan landscapes and his unusual technique of painting the human form, known as “matchstick men.” Lowry’s work is typically associated with or classified as naive art due to the stylized characters and absence of weather effects in his paintings. He often painted dark, deserted landscapes, menacing faces, and marionette pieces.
Stanley Spencer
Stanley Spencer, an English painter, is regarded as one of the most innovative artists in 20th-century British art. The iconography of his paintings was heavily influenced by his childhood home of Cookham, where the artist spent the most of his life. His work features landscapes, sporadic portraits, and pictures of creative and religious issues. Ultimately, he is most renowned for his religious paintings, which include local Biblical subjects. Spencer portrayed his fellow residents as their Gospel equivalents, referring to his town as a village in Heaven.
Peter Doig
In Peter Doig’s writing, magical realism is a recurring theme. Doig’s photography has received recognition on a global scale for its ability to capture peaceful moments and the impossibly silent. Canoes and water, which he drew as a boy, are acknowledged as his foundational imagery. The boats’ reflection in the water is seen as a metaphor for living two lives and serving as a fantasy mirror into the unknowable. His semi-abstract landscape paintings are inspired by images from movies, newspaper articles, and pictures. Many people have cited well-known artists like Munch, Monet, and Klimt as key influences on his use of paint, color, and subject matter.
Final words
These are the top 10 artists to be alive in the UK as of now. You can learn more about them on the internet, and even take a look at their artwork.
