Paul Huxley

Paul Huxley’s first solo exhibition was at the Rowan Gallery, London in 1963.  In 1964 he was selected by Bryan Robertson for ‘The New Generation’ at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the exhibition which first introduced emerging artists of the sixties to a wider public.  Works in this show from Huxley’s ‘fluid series’ of paintings became highly influential within the genre of new abstract painting at the time and won him first prize in the Stuyvesant Travel Awards.  The award took him to the USA where he met many of the leading American artists of the period such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, often visiting their studios and in some cases forming lasting friendships.

His ‘studio series’ reintroduced the themes of the standing form that had previously been a feature in works of the late sixties and now was continued in subsequent paintings, for instance in the Modus Operandi series of the late 1980s and the Anima Animus series of the 1990s, where Huxley presented the concept of interactions between differing hypothetical renderings of image, flat color field, line, chiaroscuro and collage. 

Over the last four decades Huxley's work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Britain and internationally.  Recent projects have included large-scale wall drawings in Chichester and London, an ongoing series of paintings on a Chinese theme and, most recently, a series of sculptural maquettes towards a larger project.

Huxley has also taught in art schools throughout his career and has contributed to policy in the academic and curatorial fields.  He was a member of the advisory panels for the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Serpentine Gallery, a Trustee of the Tate Gallery, acting for a period as chairman of its Exhibitions Committee, and chairman of the Art & Design Research Exercise for the Higher Education Funding Council for England.He has been a member of the Royal Academy of Arts since 1987 acting as their Treasurer for fourteen years until 2014 and for a brief period as President.

He was Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art from 1986 until 1998 after which he was elected Honorary Fellow and Professor Emeritus.  Many of his students from these years such as Dinos Chapman, Nigel Cook, Dexter Dalwood, Andrew Grassie, Tracey Emin, Chantal Joffe and Chris Ofili are now established artists contributing to the new British art which has been so widely acclaimed.

Courtesy of the Artist