Tag: Glynn Vivian Art Gallery

A port painter

January 20, 2023 1 Comment
A port painter

The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery has got into the excellent habit of displaying a good mix of works from its permanent collection along a long wall in one of its upstairs rooms.  This has the advantage of letting us see paintings that would not otherwise often see the light of day.  When I was there […]

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Swansea and Chile: exploitation, sanctuary, fulfilment

May 6, 2022 0 Comments
Swansea and Chile: exploitation, sanctuary, fulfilment

The Glynn Vivian has a show of work from its collection on the theme ‘art and industry’.  It’s full of wonderful and thought-provoking things: well-known paintings as well as much less familiar items on paper and in other media.  A whole wall is taken up with Josef Herman’s massive ‘Miners’ oil painting of 1951, surely […]

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The Black Flag

October 30, 2020 1 Comment
The Black Flag

The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery is closed for ‘firewall’ fortnight, but when it reopens you could do worse than pay it a visit.  There are several excellent temporary exhibitions, as well as some seldom-seen items from the permanent collection, including a small display of art on the theme of protest.  Its centrepiece is a striking […]

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Men come together to make a man

March 30, 2018 2 Comments
Men come together to make a man

I was wandering absently through the galleries of the Glynn Vivian the other day, trying, unsuccessfully, to remember what the Welsh word for ‘unflattering’ might be, when I stopped suddenly in front of a Japanese print. It was in one of the rooms devoted to the gallery’s founding collection, which once belonged to Richard Glynn […]

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Phil Eglin’s wobbly jugs

February 19, 2017 0 Comments
Phil Eglin’s wobbly jugs

Haptic art is alive.  Marcel Duchamp’s pale followers have failed, over the last hundred years, to snuff out the pleasure of making things with your hands.  Squeezing red acrylic paint out of a tube and trailing it with a finger over a canvas still has irresistible appeal.  So does mixing and shaping clay and hardening […]

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Glenys

January 21, 2017 0 Comments
Glenys

There’s only one person in Swansea known by everyone as ‘Glenys’.  And there couldn’t be a more popular or fitting choice for the Glynn Vivian’s first big exhibition after its five-year sleep than a retrospective of the works of Glenys Cour, born in 1924 and still painting daily at the age of 92. What’s more, […]

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The new Glynn Vivian: Day 1

October 16, 2016 1 Comment
The new Glynn Vivian: Day 1

For five years the façade of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery has been hidden by tall wooden hoardings.  A week or two ago the screens came down, and yesterday, at last, the ‘new’ Glynn Viv opened its doors to the public. In the morning a long parade of people walked through the city centre to […]

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Swansea art now

July 23, 2016 2 Comments
Swansea art now

Set alongside Cardiff, its ancient rival, Swansea wins no prizes.  Or so it seems. Political and financial power has long been concentrated in the capital.  Cardiff’s economic magnet increases its force year by year.  As a shopping centre Swansea has steadily lost ground – even Carmarthen has more to offer these days.  Jobs tend to […]

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The destruction of culture: a plea to Swansea Council

March 13, 2016 7 Comments
The destruction of culture: a plea to Swansea Council

What makes a city a city?  I mean, in the sense of a particular, distinctive city.  Its people, certainly, its geography, landscape and architecture, also its economy and politics.  But what really sets a city apart from its neighbours is its culture – that network of traditions, customs, institutions and habits, most of them with […]

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Atalanta

March 8, 2015 0 Comments
Atalanta

For International Women’s Day, here’s a Greek woman of formidable talent and power. Since 1935 she’s lived in Swansea, in the collection of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. She’s hidden away from public view at the moment while the Gallery’s home is being modernised. She was absent from the big Christopher Williams exhibition curated by […]

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