Robert Colquhoun

1914 - 1962

Robert Colquhoun was a painter, printmaker and theatre designer. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art in 1933, where he met his collaborator Robert MacBryde, with whom he would work for life. At Glasgow, he and MacBryde awarded first prize for drawing and Colquhoun won the travelling scholarship. Gauguin and Percy Wydham Lewis were early influences on Colquhoun, who in 1937-9 was travelling to France and Italy with MacBryde. After a brief period in the Army he was invalided out and lived in London with MacBryde and Minton, and associated with other Neo-Romantic artists and Jankel Adler, who encouraged Colquhoun to concentrate on lone figure studies rather than landscapes. Hieratic individuals and abstract forms now became a hallmark of his art. He worked with MacBryde on several set designs after the War, both in Stratford and in London. A retrospective of his work was held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1958.