William Tillyer (born 28 September 1938) is a British artist working within painting, watercolour and the printmaking tradition. His approach is constantly evolving; redefining and reinterpreting classic subject matter, such as landscapes, still lifes and portraits, in methods that challenge historical traditions and vary between bodies of work. Since the 1950s, Tillyer has exhibited internationally, and his work can be found in the collections of major institutions including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Brooklyn Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Tate Britain and the Victoria and Albert Museum. There are at least 15 works by Tillyer in the Tate collection, including High Force (1974).
Early life and education
Born in Middlesbrough, Tillyer studied painting at the Middlesbrough College of Art from 1956 to 1959 before moving to London in the 1960s to study at the Slade School of Art, with painting as his main subject and printmaking as his subsidiary. There, he encountered William Coldstream and Anthony Gross, among others.
In 1959, Tillyer had two of his paintings – Painting and Sea, Clouds and Beach (both 1958) – accepted for the 'Young Contemporaries' exhibition, the tenth in a series of annual shows arranged to make public the best work done by students in England's art schools. The paintings were selected that year by Victor Pasmore, Terry Frost, Andrew Forge, Ceri Richards and William Turnbull.
Following his time at the Slade, Tillyer took up a French Government Scholarship to study gravure under Stanley William Hayter, at Atelier 17 in Paris. Here, Tillyer had what he describes as "the archetypal artist's studio" at rooftop level in the American Pavilion of the Cité Universitaire, where he lived and worked when not in Hayter's studio. There he found a dense population of students, and a properly equipped print workshop. The pressure, though, was such that he spent much of his time in his room, making prints without a press. In 1963 he returned to England, and lived first in Notting Hill, in something close to abject poverty, and then in Middlesbrough.
By the later 1960s Tillyer was experimenting with constructed works with a conceptual basis, working on ideas of the grid and of the implied performative nature of hardware such as hinges and handles, he made works including Fifteen Drawer Pulls, 1966.
Printmaking
Tillyer began experimenting with printmaking in 1958, while a student at the Slade, and it was as a printmaker that he made his first reputation. He won international acclaim at the Second International Print Biennale in Kraków in 1968, and, the following year, found the support of Bernard Jacobson, who has been his dealer ever since. They met after Tillyer paid a visit to Jacobson, one of the leading print dealers and publishers in the country, in his office on Mount Street, Mayfair armed with a selection of his newest prints. Jacobson was enthusiastic and selected two for immediate publication, Mrs Lumsden's and The Large Birdhouse.
The late 1960s saw a sudden explosion in the making and marketing of prints in Britain and generally in the Western world. International print exhibitions became regular events, some of them awarding major prizes. There was a new interest in prints as an art form, one that attracted a growing class of art-interested people not wealthy enough to collect unique paintings and sculpture. Finely edited and packaged suites and portfolios of prints, especially those produced by young and rising artists, were seen as attractive investments.
Tillyer's first major exhibition was held at Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol in 1970 and consisted of 33 etchings, three of which were immediately purchased by the British Council for its enterprising collection. With these prints, Tillyer used a variety of techniques, from etching to five tone screenprinting, to create lattices which through their gradation of tone depict what Pat Gilmour described as "a cool and unpeopled world...in which to reflect the surrounding flux of nature."
Encouraged by Tillyer's showing at the Arnolfini Gallery, Jacobson published a further four etchings, the Dry Lake suite. In 1971, 26 of his etchings were shown in the new Print Gallery within the Arts Council's Serpentine Gallery in London. Henceforth, with Jacobson marketing them, Tillyer's prints were seen and appreciated more widely. Other artists responded to them with enthusiasm, notably David Hockney, Sam Francis, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol. From 1972 onwards, Tillyer's work has been shown regularly in group and solo exhibitions around the world.