George Claessen: New exhibition in London

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George Claessen

George Claessen: Babel to Abstraction - a major retrospective exhibition of the late artist’s multifaceted work is now on in London.

Presented by Three Highgate Gallery in London, which is in the vicinity where Claessen himself lived and worked, it is the first exhibition of his work in London in 18 years. The works on show span over 70 years and reflect Claessen’s extraordinary career as an artist.

Born in Sri Lanka and later moving to London in 1949 where he lived for the rest of his life, Claessen (1909-99) was a self-taught artist and poet whose art was characterised by his mystical outlook and beliefs.

In addition to the retrospective of Claessen’s work, Three Highgate Editions, the publishing arm of the gallery, will release a new collection of his poetry. Titled Collected Poems of a Painter, it features 86 of George Claessen’s poems and a foreword by Alistair Hicks. See (ttps://www.shearsman.com/store/George-Claessen-Collected-Poems-of-a-Painter-p586407841)

Three Highgate and George Claessen’s Estate have also partnered with Emmy/Sundance award-winning documentary film director, Rob Lemkin, to produce a documentary film of his life and art. The film is scheduled to premiere in November to tie in with the exhibition. See www.threehighgate.com.

Claessen was a founding member of the '43 Group, a 20th-century modern art movement established in August 1943 in Colombo, Sri Lanka who embraced modern European artistic forms over traditional Sri Lankan forms while also using some of their own cultural origins as the building bricks for a new art. Poetry was also at the centre of all of the '43 Group’s art and almost all of its members were practitioners of more than one art, allowing for a wider vision. In the 1960s Claessen joined the New Vision Group in London, which consisted of artists committed to abstract and avant-garde art in its many iterations.

Classen exhibited his work internationally until well into the 70s, while working as a draughtsman until his retirement. He showed at Venice Biennale in 1956 and at the Saõ Paulo, Brazil, Biennale of 1959, where he won an award. Whilst popular among art enthusiasts and collectors in Sri Lanka, he is relatively unknown in the West and rest of the world. With the growing interest in South Asian Art in the West there is a revival of interest in Claessen’s work.