William Scott

Irish / Scottish

Painter. Born Greenock, Scotland. He moved to Enniskillen, Northern Ireland in 1924. He studied at Belfast College of Art, 1928-31 and at the RA Schools, 1931.

In 1937 he travelled and lived in France. He had his first solo exhibition at the Leger Gallery, London in 1942 and represented Britain in the Venice Biennale in 1958. In 1959 he was awarded the first prize at the 2nd John Moores Exhibition, Liverpool. He was artist-in-residence in 1963-65 at the Ford Foundation in Berlin. In 1977 he was elected to the RA. His paintings of still lifes in the late 1940s and early 1950s led on to a brief experimentation with pure abstraction. This was later discarded for a spare arrangement of simple shapes on a flat ground which are reminiscent of pots, plants and other household items.

LITERATURE
Alan Bowness, William Scott: Paintings, Lund Humphries, London 1964.